Amphibious Netherlands: Political Rhetoric and Ecological Urgency

The Netherlands has long been defined by its relationship with water. Much of the country lies below sea level, and centuries of hydraulic engineering—from dikes and canals to drainage systems—have sought to control rivers, protect settlements, and reclaim land from marshes and the sea. These interventions reflect a deep cultural confidence in technological mastery over nature, but they have also produced new vulnerabilities; subsiding soils, rising sea levels, and ecological degradation challenge the idea that water can be fully contained. In this context, the swamp emerges as a particularly loaded symbol. Historically framed as a “threat to health and sanity, to the clean and proper body and mind,” the swamp, within a Western European perspective, has often been seen as a symbol of death, disease, and the monstrous—a projection screen for what dominant culture feared, rejected, or refused to recognize as normative (Giblett 3). Yet the same landscape also offers a space to rethink human-environment relations, suggesting strategies for adaptation, resilience, and co-existence with water rather than domination over it. This essay examines the swamp in contemporary Dutch discourse, and asks how it can operate simultaneously as a site of political anxiety and as a framework for ecological governance. In doing so, it explores what the shifting meanings of the swamp reveal about the limits of traditional engineering, the challenges of adaptive governance, and the possibilities for more experimental, relational approaches to managing the delta.

In 2022, former Delta Commissioner Peter Glas stated in an interview to Witteveen & Bos that “in the long run, the Netherlands will become amphibious. We must move with the flow [meebewegen] where water takes us” (qtd. in Richter 95). By suggesting that water reclaim low-lying regions, Glas’s vision represents a radical departure from the Netherlands’ long tradition of draining and reclaiming wetlands. By reframing the Dutch delta as a site of adaptation rather than domination, Glas positions water as an active participant in governance rather than a threat to be controlled. However, this ecological perspective has yet to fully permeate Dutch political discourse, which remains attached to more conventional swamp metaphors. In 2017, Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV), echoing Donald Trump’s “drain the swamp” slogan, infused the catchphrase with Islamophobic, anti-immigration, and populist rhetoric (Mikołajczyk 11). As Dominika Mikołajczyk observes, the PVV’s 2023 electoral success was framed as a triumph in “unswamping” the Netherlands, disproportionately threatening vulnerable groups (11–12). The tension between Glas’s ecological vision and Wilders’s exclusionary politics underscores a profound dissonance in contemporary Dutch discourse, where the swamp serves both as a means of ecological integration in one realm and a metaphor for anxious exclusion in another.

As Maarten Zwiers notes, “‘drain the swamp’ is not just a one-dimensional campaign slogan but has multiple meanings, with political, economic, environmental, and racial implications” (32). This flexibility allows the metaphor to operate across domestic and transnational contexts, mobilising political agendas while also carrying ideological resonance beyond national borders.

In the hands of Wilders, the phrase becomes a rallying cry for far-right anxieties, evoking an image of the West threatened by Islamic fundamentalism and elite betrayal (Mikołajczyk 11). Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump employed the same slogan to signal anti-establishment sentiments and alleged corruption (Rindzeviciute 7). In both cases, the metaphor performs politically: it constructs a threat, mobilises fear, and justifies intervention. Alexander Dugin, Putin’s geopolitical ideologue, read Trump’s 2016 election through the same lens, interpreting “draining the swamp” as a move against globalist networks (Rindzeviciute 7). Here, the metaphor bridges divergent regimes, illustrating its malleability as a political tool across contexts. Egle Rindzeviciute concludes that both Putin and Trump (and, I would add, Wilders) wield the swamp as a cipher for their unease with forces they do not fully understand, but desperately want to eradicate (7). The swamp, in this sense, becomes shorthand for backwardness, justifying erasure in the name of “progress” while advancing control, purity, and dominance across divergent political landscapes (Rindzeviciute 7).

However, Rindzeviciute suggests that the swamp offers more than just a murky metaphor; it provides “a useful lens to critically assess what is often described as modern governance” (1). This governance model, often celebrated for its reliance on human reason and its promise of imposing strict, mechanical order and linear control, is not as infallible as it claims to be (Rindzeviciute 1). Instead, it falters in the face of complexity and chaos, the very elements the swamp embodies. To capture this tension, Rindzeviciute introduces the concept of “swamp modernity,” a term that challenges the supremacy of hierarchical and linear models of order and control, which are typically upheld as universal ideals (Rindzeviciute 1). Swamps—messy and unpredictable—become stand-ins for “biospheric objects” that defy these rigid paradigms, demonstrating where such models of order collapse under the weight of their own limitations (1). In this breakdown, uncertainty emerges, and the swamp becomes a “material and conceptual resource” for navigating this instability (1).

Rindzeviciute describes “swamp modernity” as an “ambivalent epistemological condition” (2). In one sense, the swamp represents a chaotic, unpredictable force that challenges the human-centred society built on instrumental reason (Rindzeviciute 2). Conversely, “swamp modernity” points to the possibility of a more integrated relationship between humans and nature [1], suggesting alternative ways to reflect and explore complexity (2). Rindzeviciute concludes that the swamp is re-emerging as a force that challenges modern rationality (11). This reconceptualization of the swamp as a site of epistemic and ecological reflection reframes it from a site of fear to a medium for adaptive thinking. By positioning the swamp as both a material and conceptual resource, Rindzeviciute challenges the dichotomy between human mastery and environmental contingency, emphasising that uncertainty is not a deficit to be eradicated but a condition to be engaged with. In this sense, I argue that “swamp modernity” resonates with Glas’s vision of an amphibious Netherlands: both propose a mode of co-existence with natural forces rather than their subjugation.

Located at the confluence of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Maas rivers, which flow into the North Sea, the Netherlands constitutes a significant delta region. Deltas are dynamic zones where rivers and estuaries deposit silt, creating a transitional interface between land and sea (Jensen and Morita, “Delta Ontologies” 118). In Western traditions of geomorphology and land reclamation, deltas have been seen as areas where rivers actively shape the land (119). This perspective, shaped by colonial irrigation projects and techno-scientific expertise, has highlighted the potential of river deltas for agricultural development (121-122). As a result, efforts in these regions often focused on drainage systems and the construction of dikes (121-122). 

This historical understanding of the delta as a landscape to be stabilised, disciplined, and made productive through engineering now confronts its material limits, as the very techniques designed to secure land and water begin to destabilise the ground they were meant to control. Like many coastal and delta regions, the Netherlands is slowly subsiding due to human interventions, including groundwater extraction, drainage, and the added pressure placed on soft soils (Erkens and Stouthamer 733). Over time, these interventions have also contributed to a slow but continuous and, in many cases, largely irreversible process of saltwater intrusion into subsurface freshwater reserves, a process further intensified by ongoing sea-level rise (Oude Essink and Kooi 228, 246). Contemporary spatial policy increasingly articulates a model in which the swamp is approached as a system capable of absorbing and redistributing these pressures. According to Simon Richter, the traditional century-old approach to land stabilisation is no longer adequate, pushing the country toward a “paradigm shift” (92). Advocates for this shift propose an “amphibious” strategy, which prioritises water and soil as guiding principles for water management and spatial planning (Richter 95, 98). This strategy, articulated as “Water en Bodem Sturend” (WBS; this can be roughly translated as “water and soil as governing principles”) emphasises adaptability and retreat rather than rigid control and expansion (Richter 95-96).

As Simon Richter notes, the ecological underpinnings of WBS originate in the 1986 “Plan Ooievaar” (“Plan Stork”), which proposed removing secondary dikes to restore riparian forests and marshlands, thereby supporting river regeneration while maintaining the viability of commercial navigation (92). A significant step forward came with the second report from the Delta Commission [2] in 2008. Tasked with advising the Dutch government on the long-term impacts of sea-level rise and climate change through 2100–2200, the commission produced a report titled “Samen werken met water” (“Working together with water”). The report stressed the importance of adapting to climate change by working in alignment with natural processes. It argued that long-term safety and habitability in the Netherlands depend on developing alongside climatic shifts, suggesting that moving with—and strategically harnessing—natural dynamics would generate solutions capable of gradual adjustment for both human and ecological systems (Richter 94). As Richter notes, this principle of collaborative adaptation manifested within this framework in various iterations such as “meegroeien” (“grow with”), “mee stijgen” (“rise with”), “mee ontwikkelen” (“develop with”), “meegaan” (“go with”), and “meebewegen” (“move with”) (94).

The subsequent advancement occurred in March 2017, when Deltares [3] released the results of a policy hackathon titled “Als de zeespiegel sneller stijgt” (“If sea levels rise more rapidly”). The hackathon aimed to evaluate the capacity of existing infrastructure to cope with rapid and extreme sea-level rise. It concluded with three illustrated adaptation strategies. As Richter notes, although the concepts of “meegroeien” and “meebewegen” were not explicitly referenced, one sketch anticipated the idea of “meebewegen” by illustrating a shifted Dutch coastline to the east, accompanied by a cluster of island cities representing Rotterdam, The Hague, and Amsterdam (95).

Richter argues that the term “meebewegen” is deliberately ambiguous, conveying a readiness to remain flexible and adaptable, to respond to extremes, and to move with the flow (95). Unlike traditional approaches to sea-level rise, which often rely on costly infrastructure guided by fixed projections or risk assessments, “meebewegen” embodies a fundamentally adaptive strategy, prioritising resilience and alignment with natural processes over rigid control (Richter 95). In a February 2022 interview, Peter Glas linked “meebewegen” to the path that climate change and sea-level rise would impose on the lower Netherlands: “We must prepare gradually for the centuries beyond 2100. In the long term, the Netherlands will become amphibious. We must move with the flow [meebewegen] and follow where the water leads us” (qtd. in Richter 95). A large part of Peter Glas’s vision was reflected in the 2022 ministerial letter on WBS, which states that letting water and soil shape spatial planning will ensure that people can keep living and working in the Netherlands, even as the climate becomes more uncertain and unpredictable. (Richter 95).

So, where to build and where to move to? These questions connect the concept of “meebewegen” with the principles of WBS. While WBS primarily addresses “where to build,” “meebewegen” expands the focus to include the placement of infrastructure, introducing two additional considerations: “how to build” and “where to move to” (Richter 95). As Richter explains, WBS aims to prolong human habitation in low-lying areas for as long as water and soil systems permit (98). To achieve this, the approach prioritises flood mitigation, strengthens the adaptive capacity of foreshores in response to sea-level rise, expands freshwater storage, and preserves space for future dike reinforcement. At the same time, it seeks to avoid so-called “high-regret” investments: costly infrastructural interventions that risk becoming obsolete, stranded, or submerged under changing climatic conditions (Richter 98).

The National Delta Programme 2024, “Now For The Future,” emphasises the integration of WBS into the Netherlands' spatial planning strategy since 2022 (27-28, 36). The document underscores the growing urgency of confronting the limits of conventional water management, observing that in regions such as peatlands and sandy soils, technological interventions are approaching their practical and ecological thresholds (36). WBS principles reveal the unsustainability of existing land use and water management systems, which can no longer be universally upheld across the country (36). The document further argues that water and soil systems set non-negotiable spatial limits on land use and social functions, making broad societal transitions unavoidable (36). Such shifts will inevitably affect citizens and businesses alike and are likely to generate significant public debate, if not outright resistance (36). This positions “meebewegen” as a governance logic that redistributes spatial and political constraints from engineered systems to society itself, requiring adaptation not only from landscapes but from the social groups that inhabit them.

As Simon Richter explains, much of this anticipated resistance arises from the suspicion that “meebewegen” may ultimately entail retreat. Proposals to redirect housing and infrastructure investments toward higher elevations in the eastern Netherlands are therefore perceived by some as the initial phase of a long-term withdrawal from vulnerable low-lying areas (Richter 95). Critics such as Ties Rijcken and Friso de Zeeuw oppose codifying WBS principles into law, arguing that such regulations could result in excessive control, which they describe as “Water en Bodem Dicterend” (“water and soil as dictatorial principles”) (96). Rijcken and De Zeeuw minimise the importance of precautionary adaptation measures, instead advocating for large-scale housing developments in low-lying, flood-prone areas as a solution to the current housing crisis (Richter 96, 98). They maintain that the presumed superiority of Dutch hydraulic engineering and water management is sufficient to safeguard such projects, reflecting a deeply rooted, century-long confidence in technological mastery as the primary solution to environmental risk (Richter 98). At the same time, their position foregrounds the urgency of the present—an acute housing shortage and immediate existential concerns—thereby sharpening the tension between short-term demands and the long-term horizon of adaptive, climate-oriented planning.

Despite the criticism, the 2025 National Delta Programme “Towards A New Balance In The Living Environment: Room To Live With Water” underscores the necessity of fully implementing WBS principles (26). It emphasises that WBS comes with the obligation of being embedded in the planning instruments of national and regional governments (26). The programme calls for a transformative approach to spatial planning, requiring a shift in awareness and methodology (26). The document stresses that this shift represents not only a technical adjustment, but also a societal transformation (18, 50, 67).

Casper Bruun Jensen and Atsuro Morita argue that governance by itself is unlikely to resolve the delta crisis, as such a solution would require dismantling large parts of existing river infrastructure (“Deltas in Crisis” 2). This claim directly challenges the assumption that better policy or more refined regulation can resolve environmental instability without confronting the material and epistemic foundations of modern water management itself. Within this framework, they insist that meaningful responses must extend beyond governance narrowly conceived (2). By promoting experimentation with “sophisticated conjunctions,” Jensen and Morita highlight the blind spots and perspective-bound limits that conventional research methods often fail to address (2). Rather than overlooking these blind spots, they frame them as structural features of disciplinary thinking, suggesting that the delta crisis persists precisely because knowledge remains siloed and hierarchically ordered.

Sophisticated conjunctions, according to Jensen and Morita, open the way toward a cosmo-political approach in which social, environmental, and sustainability sciences collaborate with designers, urban planners, policymakers, and affected communities, addressing the multi-scalar delta crisis by “working across their differences” (2). This emphasis on heterogeneity, I argue, resonates strongly with the logic of swamp modernity: both reject linear, top-down control in favor of relational, experimental engagement with complexity. In this context, sophisticated conjunctions are described as “attentive to heterogeneity and cognizant of the recursive relations between science, policy, society, and environments” (14). By foregrounding recursion and interdependence, Jensen and Morita implicitly undermine the technocratic fantasy of detached expertise, instead proposing a form of knowledge production embedded within the very ecological and social systems it seeks to govern.

Jensen and Morita acknowledge that diverse methods, epistemologies, and concepts do not align “seamlessly” (“Deltas in Crisis” 9). Rather than viewing this lack of coherence as a problem to be corrected, they treat it as a constitutive feature of the delta condition itself. They frame the delta crisis as unfolding within an emergent, hybrid socio-natural system, bringing into view what they call a cosmo-ecology [4]: an ecology shaped by irreducible heterogeneity and recursive interactions between research and practice. Knowledge production cannot stand outside the systems it seeks to manage; it is folded back into them. This recursive dynamic challenges the technocratic aspiration to detached oversight, reinforcing the argument that delta governance requires epistemic humility and experimental engagement rather than rigid control. 

Unlike social-ecological policy approaches (which often rely on technocratic solutions to address the challenges of adaptive governance) or political ecology (which foregrounds the role of institutional power in shaping environmental outcomes), cosmo-ecological research and practice take a different orientation. They center on cultivating “learning attentiveness to the infinite ways of being affected and of affecting” (Despret and Meuret qtd. in Jensen and Morita, “Deltas in Crisis” 9). Drawing on philosopher Michel Serres, Jensen and Morita contend that addressing the delta crisis requires sophisticated conjunctions of diverse forms of knowledge and practice (9). Such an approach seeks to both grasp the multifaceted nature of the crisis and develop inventive responses across incongruent contexts, including biodiversity conservation, urban planning, agriculture, river infrastructure, and political deliberation (9). Within this framework, the various forms of knowledge associated with the delta are viewed as existing in a mutually enriching yet complex relationship (9).

Jensen and Morita further argue that science should not be understood as a detached, overarching perspective hovering above policy and practice. Rather, it is one set of practices among many (“Deltas in Crisis” 9). This framing challenges the conventional notion of science as neutral and separate, emphasising instead its embeddedness within social, political, and practical contexts (9–10). Because research is inherently entangled with other epistemologies and forms of practice, it opens space to experiment with new relations, perspectives, and collaborative conjunctions (9–10). Such interplay allows knowledge production to be reimagined, revealing approaches and insights that might otherwise remain inaccessible (10). By destabilising apparent certainties, these experimental engagements generate questions that challenge existing assumptions and provoke the development of new research agendas (10). In doing so, they foster critical dialogue and drive innovation, not only in the methods employed but also in the conceptual frameworks guiding research (10). Read through the lens of the swamp, this destabilisation aligns with an understanding of knowledge as necessarily situated within conditions of uncertainty, where governance cannot rely on fixed, detached models but must instead engage with shifting, heterogeneous realities. In this sense, the troubling nature of science as a neutral authority mirrors the broader political and ecological challenge of negotiating with, rather than controlling, the indeterminate dynamics that define the delta.

​​This essay has argued that the swamp is not a marginal or incidental figure in contemporary Dutch discourse, but rather a site where political rhetoric, ecological transformation, and epistemological uncertainty converge. As a metaphor, the swamp continues to function as a tool of exclusion, mobilised by populist and authoritarian politics to produce fear, boundary-making, and fantasies of purification. As a material landscape, however, it re-emerges as a space of ecological necessity – one that resists control, linearity, and technological mastery. The tension between these two meanings exposes a deeper contradiction: while Dutch governance increasingly acknowledges the limits of engineering, planning, and infrastructural dominance, political language still draws on imaginaries of mastery, drainage, and eradication.

The shift toward amphibious governance, articulated through “Water en Bodem Sturend” and “meebewegen,” signals a profound reorientation in how land, water, and habitation are understood in the Netherlands. Yet this transformation remains incomplete and contested, constrained by historical attachments to technological supremacy and national identity forged through land reclamation. The persistence of these imaginaries reveals that adaptation is not only a technical or spatial challenge, but a cultural and political one, requiring the reconfiguration of deeply embedded narratives of control, progress, and human exceptionalism.

This study suggests that the swamp is more than a symbol of disorder or decay. It can serve as a lens for engaging with uncertainty and interdependence, encouraging reflection on instability rather than resisting it. In this light, the amphibious Netherlands is not merely a projected spatial condition, but represents a new way of inhabiting vulnerability – one that calls for fresh political vocabularies, reimagined governance practices, and closer attunement to the interactions between humans, landscapes, and nonhuman systems. Living with the swamp does not mean surrendering control, but acknowledging that coexistence and adaptation must take precedence over the long-standing Dutch ideal of mastering water and land.

‍