Researchers Ilona Bontenbal and Hanna-Mari Husu of LUT University in Finland examined the online output of the national broadcaster NOS, the tabloid De Telegraaf and the newspaper de Volkskrant, using the Dutch keyword for sea-level rise to capture ten years of coverage. Of the 539 articles identified, 215 discussed some form of adaptation. Yet those discussions were far from evenly distributed: 111 articles focused on protection measures, while only 29 covered accommodation strategies such as floating homes or spatial planning, and just 30 mentioned retreat from the coast. The pattern was consistent across outlets regardless of political leaning, though De Telegraaf showed somewhat more variety and, notably, carried a strand of outright climate skepticism in roughly 15 percent of its sea-level rise articles.

To make sense of these patterns, the researchers applied a three-part framework of trust drawn from social science. Generalised trust reflects broad, background confidence that things will work out in the absence of reasons to doubt. System trust rests on formal institutions, laws, regulatory bodies and expert organisations. Process-based trust grows out of repeated interactions and accumulated track records over time. Each of these forms, the study shows, is mobilised in Dutch media reporting to shore up confidence in technological solutions, and each is conspicuously weaker when the coverage turns to accommodation or retreat.

Protection measures dominate the coverage because they are wrapped in every available layer of trust. Articles routinely imply that sea-level rise is technologically solvable if action is taken on time, with experts explaining that the Netherlands could likely keep defending itself against several metres of rise by adding sand and raising dikes. Process-based trust appears in frequent invocations of centuries of Dutch water management history, from the great Delta Works initiated after the devastating 1953 flood to storm surge barriers such as the Eastern Scheldt and Maeslant barriers. System trust is visible in the near-constant quotation of experts from the Delta Programme, the Deltares research institute, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and Dutch universities, whose voices appear in almost every article on the topic. Generalised trust surfaces in the confident assertion that the country can afford whatever engineering is required, with one professor of hydraulic engineering quoted in de Volkskrant estimating an extra billion euros per metre of sea-level rise per year and declaring that the Netherlands is perfectly positioned to pay it.

The media narratives also draw a sharp line between the Netherlands and the rest of the world in ways that reinforce national confidence. One water expert quoted in de Volkskrant captured the contrast with a wry observation: put a few Dutch people in a high-risk flood zone and they will start building dikes, whereas Americans who can afford it put their houses on poles and the rest are out of luck. Individual-level protection built by residents, common in less wealthy countries and on islands such as the Marshall Islands, is described in the Dutch press as something done elsewhere, with informal sea walls made of household waste and rusted car parts presented as a stark foil to professional, state-funded engineering at home. This juxtaposition, the authors argue, strengthens a narrative of Dutch exceptionalism in which adaptation belongs firmly in the hands of experts.

Even speculative mega-projects are absorbed into this techno-optimist frame. The coverage includes discussions of the proposed Northern European Enclosure Dam, a hypothetical structure of 637 kilometres of dams that would seal off the North Sea entirely, along with ideas for new artificial islands and vast pumps. These proposals are presented as technological imaginaries, distant but conceivable futures in which engineering ultimately prevails. Intriguingly, the societal implications of such radical reshaping of coastlines are barely discussed, which the researchers interpret as a sign that these ideas function less as serious near-term plans than as expressions of faith in the power of technology itself. Softer, nature-based protection such as beach nourishment and dune rehabilitation is also covered, often framed as the innovative way forward, working with nature rather than against it.

Accommodation strategies receive far less attention, and when they appear they are cast as futuristic rather than practical. Floating cities and floating neighbourhoods feature as long-term safety nets, mentioned with a certain lightness, as in one article that imagined the Dutch happily bobbing around with the rising sea while solving the housing shortage. More grounded accommodation measures, such as building houses on poles, are described as things done in the United States or on small island nations, not seriously contemplated for the Netherlands. Where accommodation does appear in practical form, it is through spatial planning: repeated reports that new housing should be built on higher ground, away from deep polders and low-lying river areas, with trust placed in the laws and regulations governing construction. Some experts also warn that the slow pace of sea-level rise breeds complacency, with too-high generalised trust leading people to assume that adaptation can simply be left to the professionals.

Retreat, by contrast, is framed as the option nobody wants to think about. Articles present it as a last resort that becomes relevant only if protection and accommodation fail, and experts interviewed in the coverage frequently express hope that the tide can be turned through emissions cuts instead. When relocation is discussed at all, it is imagined as movement from the low-lying western Netherlands to higher ground in the east, or occasionally migration to other European countries, presented without much doubt that neighbours would accept Dutch migrants. Mobility, the study notes, is portrayed as a real-time reality mainly for small island nations and poorer countries such as Bangladesh, not for the Dutch themselves. Several articles actively reassure readers that abandoning parts of the country this century is unlikely, even for areas lying below sea level.

Yet the analysis also uncovered important strands of distrust, particularly directed at the political system rather than at engineering. Experts quoted in the media complained that little serious thought is given to long-term alternatives beyond sand nourishment and raising dikes, signalling a lack of system trust in whether institutions will plan far enough ahead. Some researchers warned bluntly that adaptation alone will not suffice and that emissions must fall quickly, while others cautioned that hard protection has limits that will eventually force far-reaching decisions. De Telegraaf’s denial-oriented articles represented a different kind of distrust entirely, one aimed at the scientific assessments of sea-level rise itself rather than at any particular adaptation strategy, which the authors classify as system-based distrust of the underlying science.

The study’s central conclusion is that Dutch media coverage and the country’s policy orientation reinforce each other in a self-feeding loop. A water governance tradition built on technological protection shapes how journalists report on sea-level rise, and reporting that foregrounds engineering in turn sustains public imaginaries of continuity and business as usual, keeping transformative questions out of democratic debate and recasting political choices as technical problems for experts. The authors suggest that journalists and communicators deliberately broaden coverage to portray the full spectrum of adaptation options and their trade-offs, and communicate more clearly about the uncertainties and limits of protection-only approaches, so that decisions about how the Netherlands will live with the sea are returned to society as a whole rather than left solely to the engineers.

Subject of Research: Media representations of trust in adaptation strategies to sea-level rise in the Netherlands

Article Title: Building Techno-Scientific Trust in Adaptation to Sea-Level Rise in the Dutch Online Media

Article References: Bontenbal, I., & Husu, H.-M. (2026). Building Techno-Scientific Trust in Adaptation to Sea-Level Rise in the Dutch Online Media. Environmental Management, 76(9), Article 307. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-026-02620-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00267-026-02620-z

Keywords: sea-level rise, Netherlands, climate adaptation, techno-scientific trust, media analysis, protection measures, managed retreat, flood risk management, environmental communication, Delta Works, climate resilience, system trust

A new systematic review published in Heliyon by Catharina Dwi Astuti Depari addresses precisely this gap. While decades of research have documented coastal flooding trends, risk assessments, nature-based mitigation technologies and scenario-based projections of future impacts, relatively little synthesis has been devoted to the specific in situ adaptation strategies adopted by coastal communities themselves, and to the barriers and enablers shaping those strategies, particularly in the Global South. Using the PRISMA procedure, the review screened 2,175 records identified through a Scopus database search conducted in February 2025, narrowed them through successive rounds of eligibility assessment in Scopus and the EPPI-Reviewer software developed at University College London, and subjected 45 records to in-depth qualitative and bibliometric analysis.

The corpus revealed a research field that is growing but uneven. The earliest qualifying record was published in 2008, and publications fluctuated before peaking in 2023 with 13 records. A bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer identified ‘climate change’ as the dominant keyword, appearing 20 times and strongly linked with ‘adaptation’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘adaptive capacity’, while ‘coastal areas’ and ‘coastal community’ emerged as the newest themes in 2023 and 2024. Geographically, studies clustered in Central and Southern Asia, which accounted for 25 percent of study areas, followed by Eastern and Southeastern Asia at 16 percent, with Bangladesh and the United States dominating the case locations. Fifty-one percent of records involved multiple cases within a single region, and 11 percent spanned multiple regions, yet longitudinal studies tracking adaptation dynamics over time were conspicuously scarce.

Methodologically, the field splits along a striking regional line. About 53 percent of the reviewed studies employed qualitative methods, such as semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and document reviews, and these were primarily situated in the Global North, reflecting growing appreciation of local voices and knowledge in disaster risk reduction. Mixed-methods and quantitative studies, by contrast, were predominantly found in the Global South, where researchers analyzed local adaptation, risk and vulnerability, effective techniques for small-scale fishers, the role of social networks, and the microlevel conditions enabling adaptation. This split matters because barriers and enablers tied to social and psychological dimensions surfaced mainly in qualitative and mixed-methods records, whereas physical, environmental, financial and political dimensions appeared chiefly in quantitative work.

The review catalogued 59 coded adaptation measures across six categories. Hard strategies, including levees, dams, sea walls, dikes, island fortifications and storm surge barriers, appeared in both regions, but they carry high costs and ecological penalties, from disrupted sedimentation to reduced species diversity. Levees, the most frequently cited hard measure at 33 percent, can raise flood levels elsewhere, deepen environmental injustice by protecting wealthier communities, and fail catastrophically when design capacities are exceeded. Soft strategies, dominated by mangroves at 33 percent of 24 identified measures, were concentrated in the tropical Global South, in countries such as India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Mexico. Mangroves dissipate waves and winds, absorb floodwater, store carbon dioxide, trap sediments and buffer against tsunamis and storm surges, making them a low-cost, eco-friendly alternative to concrete.

Accommodation strategies, the most numerous category at 64 coded measures, were largely concentrated in the Global South. They ranged from improving drainage and public infrastructure to sealing leaks, raising floor levels, constructing floating platforms and an extraordinary diversity of agricultural adjustments, including salt-tolerant crops, hanging gardens, tower farming and integrated fish-pond management. Retreat strategies, such as temporary relocation and permanent migration, were identified mainly in Nicaragua, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Bangladesh, with one remarkable case in the Maldives, where the government plans to move the entire population to Hulhumalé, an artificial island built in 1997, because 80 percent of the nation’s atolls sit less than one meter above mean sea level. Attack strategies, which extend the coastline seaward through land reclamation and floating structures, appeared in only one record, from the Baltic Sea region, where hard land-water interfaces were transformed into soft transition zones with barrier parks and floating public spaces.

When it came to barriers, ten categories emerged from 211 coded entries, and institutional barriers topped the list at 30 percent, with cases predominantly in the Global South. Poor coordination between agencies was common to both regions and can produce dangerous confusion, such as unreliable information about evacuation shelter locations during emergencies. Environmental barriers accounted for 17 percent, sociocultural-economic barriers 14 percent, physical barriers 11 percent and financial barriers 9 percent. The physical consequences of maladaptation are vivid: in La Encrucijada, Mexico, levees altered river flow, increasing sedimentation, killing mangroves and destroying flood buffers, while in Bangladesh, polder communities deliberately breach embankments to let saline water reach their shrimp farms. Financial constraints bite hardest in low-income settings, from Tuvalu’s dependence on international aid to Lagos households unable to afford the sand and concrete needed to periodically raise their floors, leaving them acutely exposed. Psychological barriers, including low-risk perception, sense of place and intergenerational trauma, clustered in Global North records, with one case in Vanuatu showing how sacred attachment to ancestral lagoon sites can fuel resistance to relocation.

Against these obstacles, the review identified 107 enabling factors across 13 categories, and social cohesion led overwhelmingly at 29 percent, especially in the Global South. Mutual cooperation took tangible forms: neighbors lending money for post-disaster home reconstruction, collectively building protective infrastructure, evacuating vulnerable residents and sharing livelihood assets. Collaboration accounted for 20 percent, exemplified by partnerships between local governments in King County, Chicago and New York and universities producing climate forecasts, and by farmers in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta co-developing economic groups with the state to combat saltwater intrusion. Government assistance, at 14 percent, ranged from training and financial incentives in the Global North to logistics, protective infrastructure and community education in Bangladesh, Tuvalu and the Philippines. Local knowledge, at 9 percent, proved a quiet powerhouse: indigenous forecasting systems in the Global South, reading signs such as strange river sounds, muddy water smells and rising water levels, helped reduce fatalities long before formal warnings arrived.

From this synthesis the author derives an actionable framework linking adaptive capacity, adaptation actions, barriers and enablers under the community resilience paradigm, together with guidelines for governments and vulnerable communities. Governments are urged to promote inclusive planning, coordinate across agencies, monitor land-use change, integrate local knowledge with scientific hazard information, adopt ecosystem-based and hybrid approaches to limit maladaptation, and support communities through every phase of disaster, especially recovery. Communities, for their part, are advised to strengthen social cohesion as a buffer against insufficient state support and to co-develop groups that address livelihoods, environmental management and risk reduction together. The review also sounds a research alarm: future studies must move beyond Bangladesh and the United States toward the underexplored coasts of Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, embrace longitudinal designs that capture adaptation as a dynamic process, and clarify which barriers and enablers attach to which measures. Without such work, well-intentioned infrastructure, like the embankments that inadvertently undermined shrimp farming in the Ganga delta, risks deepening the very vulnerability it was built to reduce.

Subject of Research: A systematic review of barriers and enablers of local coastal flood adaptations in the Global North and Global South

Article Title: Examining barriers and enablers of local adaptations to coastal floods: A systematic review

Article References: Depari, C. D. A. (2026). Examining barriers and enablers of local adaptations to coastal floods: A systematic review. Heliyon, 12(14), Article e45411. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45411

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45411

Keywords: coastal flooding, climate change adaptation, Global South, systematic review, mangroves, institutional barriers, social cohesion, community resilience, sea level rise, managed retreat, PRISMA, flood risk