Mar 4, 2021 6 min read

Changing the narrative on Dutch knowledge transfer

Changing the narrative on Dutch knowledge transfer
Aerial view of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photo: Joep Janssen

In this story, Shahnoor Hasan talks about her attachment with the Dutch Delta Approach and the people who work for transfer it to selected bilateral partners of the Dutch government for sustainable delta management. She does so by reflecting on her experiences of participation to the seminar on the Dutch Approach in international delta, organized by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).

Shahnoor have studied the implementation of the Dutch Delta Approach in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the United States. In her own words: I built relationships based on trust with the people whom I talked to and interviewed, allowing me to develop an attachment to the Dutch Delta Approach with a lot of empathy for the people who worked to make its transfer happen.

While listening and analyzing accounts of these people’s efforts, struggles, disappointments, and successes, one thing became clear to me – the narrative needs to change from the ‘Dutch Approach’ to one of co-learning and contextual understanding based on local peoples needs.

Questioning realities

On the morning of the seminar, I was excited to participate in an event organized for people involved in the transfer of the Dutch Approach to jointly learn from each other’s experiences. I was particularly happy to realize that this was a follow-up to the critical conversations on the Dutch Delta Approach that took place more than a year ago at a panel at the UvA Conference 'Critical Perspectives on governance by SDGs'.

To engage with the audience at the seminar that represented mostly Dutch government officials and expert consultants, I did what I often do when I talk about the transfer of the Dutch Delta Approach. That is, to play a pictorial game that I developed by simply changing the orientations of satellite images of the delta in the Netherlands, and the deltas in Bangladesh, Vietnam and Myanmar, the countries where the Dutch government actively transfers its delta knowledge and expertise.

Left: the Dutch delta as shown in the game. Right: the Dutch delta in its usual orientation.

A significant number of the people in the audience have been associated with at least one or all four of the deltas through their work. In the game, the audience (without having any clue about the changed orientations) had to identify a delta within a few seconds of time.

The results of the game at the seminar was similar to that of at some other previous events: the audience could not recognize the deltas in their rotated orientations. Apart from using the game as a strategy of ice-breaking with audiences in workshops, seminars or conferences, I play this game to make a point at the onset of my presentation.

With the results of this simple game about ‘knowing reality’, I share with my audience that we often mistake the usual representation of reality for the only possible one, or for reality itself. Hence, we stop asking the question of why a reality is represented in a certain way.

The landscape of the deltaic region in Bangladesh. Photo: Joep Janssen

Changing the narrative

With the point made, I drew the attention of the audience to one of the dominant narratives on the transfer of the Dutch Delta Approach. This is a narrative that emphasizes the common problems in different deltas around the world to then suggest for a common, “must-have” policy solution: the Dutch Delta Approach.

The narrative explains the transfer of this Dutch expertise as something that happens almost spontaneously because of its intrinsic qualities and because of a demand for it from other countries. In the narrative, the excellence and uniqueness of Dutch delta knowledge justify the efforts and money that go into the transfer.

In some cases, the leading Dutch water and delta ambassadors do put efforts into talking about Dutch water and delta expertise abroad in more grounded and contextualized ways. Nevertheless, the common delta problems – common Dutch solutions remains the dominant narrative to support efforts to export Dutch delta knowledge to other places.

Tell the story through focusing on the efforts of the people involved in the transfer.

I then continued the presentation by proposing another way of telling the story of the transfer of the Dutch Approach, reversing the orientation of the representation as it were. Rather than telling the transfer of Dutch Delta knowledge from a vantage point of success and from an identification of those originating the transfer, I suggest that it is interesting to tell the story through focusing on the efforts of the people involved in the transfer.

This suggestion builds on the insights from my analysis based on interactions with people who have been engaged in making the transfer of the Dutch Delta Approach happen to Vietnam and Bangladesh. I am convinced that taking their experiences seriously is important towards initiating an open and critical dialogue to create better understanding of the role and the impact of the ‘Dutch Approach’ and discuss ways forward – the objectives of the seminar.

Specifically, four major insights from my work can contribute to such an open and critical dialogue.

1. Work behind the scenes

The Dutch Delta Approach does not travel on its own, nor can it be explained by its inherent qualities. In the cases of the development of the Mekong Delta Plan and the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, Vietnamese and Bangladeshi demand for the Dutch Approach did not happen spontaneously. Rather, the transfer of the Dutch Approach happened through a tremendous amount of work done by the people involved.

2. History, (geo-)politics & economics

The transfer of the Dutch Approach does not happen in a historical, (geo-)political or economic void, but in an arena that is importantly built on relations. The transfer happens between friends: the Netherlands and Vietnam; the Netherlands and Bangladesh, and the Netherlands with other countries like Indonesia or United States; and also between Dutch and non-Dutch experts.

A lot of the work that went into the development and implementation of the two Delta Plans involved the careful nurturing of old and new friendships between the Dutch and their Vietnamese or Bangladeshi partners.

Indeed, the work that goes into forging or maintenance of diplomatic and trade relations, as well as into the active cherishing of professional collaborations and joint curiosities lies at the heart of efforts to make the transfer of Dutch knowledge into a success. This relates to the following point.

When looked at the Dutch Approach through the efforts of the engaged people, it becomes evident that the types of expertise and work that transferring of the Dutch Approach require are at best remotely related to the contents of the Dutch Delta Approach. The nature of the work that the Dutch and their Vietnamese and Bangladeshi experts did is as much diplomatic and political as it is technical.

3. Evolving process

Transferring of the Dutch Approach is a process of which the final outcome is not known beforehand: the outcomes are often negotiated and contingent. The effect is that multiple versions of something that can be broadly referred to as a delta plan emerge. In other words, that what was transferred as the Dutch Approach to Vietnam and Bangladesh was not fixed, but emerged partly through the process of transfer itself.

The Mekong Delta Plan emerged as a provocative and agenda setting plan that talks about the wellbeing of the delta and its people, while also providing legitimate grounds for calling established Vietnamese development triple rice policy priorities for the delta into question.

In the case of Bangladesh, the Plan has developed as a macroeconomic and donor investment oriented plan for the entire country. The plan connects delta planning with a prioritized development goal of the Bangladeshi government – that is to make Bangladesh a middle income country by 2021.

4. Emphasize the knowledge of local people

Outside of the Netherlands people living in deltas have their own ways of knowing their deltas, managing them, and living with them or not. The narrative in which the Dutch Approach figures as a must have policy option for sustainable delta management makes it difficult to recognize the knowledge and expertise that other deltaic countries have.

This way of representing the Dutch Approach also makes it difficult to acknowledge the tremendous efforts of the Dutch, Vietnamese and Bangladeshi experts in co-creating delta plans that are perhaps more Vietnamese or Bangladeshi than Dutch.

The seminar about the Dutch Delta Approach. Photo: RVO

Continue to question the narrative

To conclude, RVO initiative to promote an open and critical dialogue is indeed laudable and welcoming especially when a growing body of critical research emerges on the export of knowledge and expertise in Dutch development cooperation programs.

This dialogue would become fruitful if we – those who are engaged to the transfer of the Dutch Approach – can co-learn from the perspectives of the Dutch who possesses the delta planning expertise, and those who receive and avail this expertise. This is important because Delta Plans outside of the Netherlands emerge as a co-learning process.

We, therefore, should put efforts to make the proposed dialogue open, modest and symmetrical in terms of developing an understanding of the Delta Approach through recognizing social and cultural contexts and knowledge on deltas different than the Dutch.

This story was first published on FLOWs

Shahnoor Hasan
Shahnoor Hasan
Shahnoor is senior researcher resilience and planning at knowledge institute Deltares, the Netherlands.
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