Project
Transformative Climate Adaption for Healthy Rural Areas (PhD project - Dore Engbersen)
My research focuses on how citizen participation can enable climate adaptation that contributes to establishing healthy rural areas in the Netherlands. Specifically, I will focus on reducing the root causes of vulnerabilities to climate change. This requires the inclusion of vulnerable groups in decision-making. However, it is challenging for governments to achieve inclusion in transformative and participatory processes. Ultimately, my research will contribute to the meaningful participation of people that are usually not involved in the decision-making processes of transformative changes.
Background
This project falls under the umbrella of the MANTRA (CliMate AdaptatioN for HealThy Rural Areas) project. This project aims to contribute to the sustainable future development of rural areas of the Netherlands by investigating the health risk of climate change in rural areas, designing climate adaptation measures, and ways in which citizens can meaningfully participate in the decision-making. Wageningen University & Researchworks together withresearchers from Maastricht University, Radboud University,Leiden University of Applied Sciences, IVO RIVM, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), and Naturalis. We will join forces with at least fourteen social and public organizations. Case studies will be performed in the regions 't Hogeland, Noord-Oost Brabant, and the Ablasserwaard. In these case studies citizens, local actors and researchers will co-create climate adaptation measures together.
Description
My PhD project will focus on the role of participatory governance in enabling transformative climate adaptation in rural areas of the Netherlands. This project will add to the development of future-proof rural areas that are less vulnerable to the health risk of climate change by reducing both social and ecological causes of vulnerabilities. First, I aim to identify which cases can be characterized as transformative climate adaptation in rural areas of The Netherlands, and to explore to what extent these cases involve citizens. Second, I will analyze different cases across Europe in which citizens have been involved in transformative climate adaptation (TCA) to assess the role of the design of participation in enabling transformative outcomes. Third, I will look into which factors and mechanisms of participatory governance can explain the transformative outcome and implementation of TCA, apart from their design. Finally, I will set up experiments in the rural labs ‘t Hoogeland, Ablasserwaard and Noord-Oost Brabant with different design interventions to test their influence on participatory governance's ability to bring about transformative climate adaptation.