Holwerd Coast Academy for Applied Climate Adaptation & Mienskip
The Holwerd Coast Academy, for Applied Climate Adaptation & Mienskip (HCA), is part of the bottom-up project Holwerd aan Zee. This "Breakthrough for man and nature" aims to reconnect the village Holwerd, and its residents, with the dynamics of the Wadden Sea. Right through the dike! Resulting in an ecological and economic boost for the entire region. On average more than 100 HCA students annually contribute in an applied way to climate adaptation & Mienskip (Frisian for community involvement).
National
Netherlands
The Holwerd Coast Academy is situated on the Wadden coast of the municipality of Noardeast-Fryslan in the province of Fryslân.
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Landmakers Coöperatie U.A. / Stichting Holwerd aan Zee Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Jan Last name of representative: Zijlstra Gender: Male Nationality: Netherlands Function: managing director HCA Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Westersingel 46 Town: Burgum Postal code: 9251 HJ Country: Netherlands Direct Tel:+31 6 51885118 E-mail:jan@holwerdaanzee.nl Website:https://www.holwerdaanzee.nl/
The Holwerd Coast Academy, for Applied Climate Adaptation & Mienskip (HCA), is a practice-oriented scientific agency for applied research focused on climate adaptation, biodiversity, future-proof agriculture, livability, CO2 reduction, ecotourism and governance renewal. The HCA began as a Living Lab in 2013 at the start of the Holwerd aan Zee project with the goal of breaching the sea dike and reconnecting the village of Holwerd with the nature of the Wadden Sea. In this unique bottom-up project - called "Mienskip" in the Frisian language - important design and social challenges come together in an area-based and integrated way in an ideal testing ground for the development of the Wadden Coast.
Since 2013, hundreds of students from more than 20 countries have researched solutions that are now or will soon be applicable elsewhere in the Wadden area. To this end, the HCA cooperates with various schools of different educational levels, governments, citizens, entrepreneurs, nature organizations and knowledge institutions. In this way, through the HCA, education contributes in a co-creative way to a sustainable climate-proof coastal landscape. And thus to the development of the Wadden Coast. Holwerd aan Zee has grown over time into an integral area development called "The Wadden Delta of 2100. This area can now also call itself (candidate) 'Unesco Biosphere Reserve Wadden Coast'. The contribution of education through the HCA has been of great importance for this. In addition to the Biosphere status, the HCA - as part of Holwerd aan Zee - is an official friend of the EU Mission 'Adaptation to Climate Change'.
Climate adaptation & Mienskip
Co-creation & area-based
Holwerd aan Zee & Unesco Biosphere Wadden Coast
Applied solutions
New generation
For the Holwerd Coast Academy, sustainable tourism and liveability are key to the development of the Wadden Coast. With the potential tourist target group as a boost who will come to the Wadden Coast for authentic experience and amazement, contemplation and meaning, self-reflection and inner peace. Not to consume the area but to value, preserve and be touched by its magnificence. The starting point for the HCA is: what is good for the eco-tourist is also good for the residents in the area.
Many residents on the coast have lost contact with the nature of the Wadden Sea and experience the sea purely as a potential danger. This is partly due to the nine-meter high barrier of concrete and asphalt (sea dike) that is supposed to protect residents from the dangers of the Wadden Sea. Many coastal residents have never even been behind that barrier in the salt marshes and never get to the Wadden Sea. As a result, the residents of Holwerd and the surrounding area are not ambassadors of the Wadden area. Let alone that they could be engaged as local guides.
The HCA, in cooperation with Holwerd aan Zee, wants to break this image by bringing the nature of the Wadden Sea inside. Straight through the sea dike with high and low tides, all the way to the village. By learning to live with the water again, instead of fighting against it. The HCA has been contributing to this for years with design research and the development of new tourism products. This creates new ways for residents to see the Wadden Sea and the salt marshes with different eyes and have them appreciate them again. This not only connects the tourist target group with the beauty and dynamics of the Wadden Sea, but the feeling of the Wadden also reaches the soul of the coastal inhabitants.
More attention to meaning, experience and authenticity changes the reputation of the area. This awareness could further help other areas find a better balance between tourism, valuable nature and the liveability in the area.
For the Holwerd Coast Academy, sustainable tourism and liveability are key to the development of the Wadden Coast. With the potential tourist target group as a boost who will come to the Wadden Coast for authentic experience and amazement, contemplation and meaning, self-reflection and inner peace. Not to consume the area but to value, preserve and be touched by its magnificence. The starting point for the HCA is: what is good for the eco-tourist is also good for the residents in the area.
Many residents on the coast have lost contact with the nature of the Wadden Sea and experience the sea purely as a potential danger. This is partly due to the nine-meter high barrier of concrete and asphalt (sea dike) that is supposed to protect residents from the dangers of the Wadden Sea. Many coastal residents have never even been behind that barrier in the salt marshes and never get to the Wadden Sea. As a result, the residents of Holwerd and the surrounding area are not ambassadors of the Wadden area. Let alone that they could be engaged as local guides.
The HCA, in cooperation with Holwerd aan Zee, wants to break this image by bringing the nature of the Wadden Sea inside. Straight through the sea dike with high and low tides, all the way to the village. By learning to live with the water again, instead of fighting against it. The HCA has been contributing to this for years with design research and the development of new tourism products. This creates new ways for residents to see the Wadden Sea and the salt marshes with different eyes and have them appreciate them again. This not only connects the tourist target group with the beauty and dynamics of the Wadden Sea, but the feeling of the Wadden also reaches the soul of the coastal inhabitants.
More attention to meaning, experience and authenticity changes the reputation of the area. This awareness could further help other areas find a better balance between tourism, valuable nature and the liveability in the area.
The HCA focuses on the Holwerd aan Zee project and the area development for the area. This area stretches from the Wadden Island of Ameland to the city of Dokkum and is now a (candidate) Unesco Biosphere Reserve with 11 villages and the city of Dokkum. This means it is impossible to exclude anyone. The Holwerd aan Zee project as well as the candidate Wadden Coast Biosphere Reserve are both bottom-up initiatives and therefore belong to the residents themselves! Everyone has a say through village boards. This also calls for new place-based governance.
This is why an area cooperation has now been established for the area around Holwerd aan Zee, more or less similar to the commons known in England and Portugal. This makes it possible to reinvest income from recreation and tourism in the area and prevents large investors from running off with the money earned, without benefiting the area.
With an area cooperation as owner and at the wheel, all residents benefit. No one is excluded. Currently, the supervisory board and an advisory board from the area is taking further shape. This is meant to monitor the cooperative's philosophy. The next step is to bring the funds already generated into a form of social financing. This model is still very new to regular governments, so this will take some time.
Through the HCA, students are introduced to this new social model and matching place-based governance. Hoping that the new generation of government administrators will break free from the current system, so that every voice in the area counts and people are no longer talked about but with. In this way, citizen participation becomes government participation!
When this is all set up and running well, we are happy to tell other areas in the Netherlands and Europe about our experiences.
The area development on which the HCA focuses communicates with residents through village meetings. These meetings are organised at the multifunctional centre MFA De Ynset in the village. Sometimes the churches or the project office at Fiskwei 30 in Holwerd is chosen, which the municipality allows the Holwerd aan Zee foundation to use.
Free publicity, socials and the website www.holwerdaanzee.nl are also used. Villages or entrepreneurs with a request for help can ask the HCA for help. For example, by doing background research, design research, conducting surveys or through concept development. On the other hand, village boards can help with these surveys and research through their webistes and Facebook pages. In this way, the HCA helps the area move forward and entrepreneurs benefit directly from the knowledge the HCA brings in.
Setting up the Living Lab for Holwerd aan Zee was made possible by a contribution from the municipality of Dongeradeel in 2016. With the establishment of the project organisation in 2019 (and the agreement of intent), the province of Friesland also supports the involvement of education, as one of the main pillars of Holwerd aan Zee. Since 2016, several educational institutions have been involved, preparing their students for jobs in tourism, public administration, landscape architecture, biodiversity, coastal and marine management, The SDGs, European Studies, etc.
Education and knowledge institutions are key partners of the HCA. Students come from educational institutions all over the Netherlands. But pupils from primary and secondary schools in the neighbourhood have also produced papers on Holwerd aan Zee in the past, thus contributing to the bottom-up initiative. The HCA has contacts with secondary vocational education, higher vocational education and universities. Not only in the Netherlands but all over the world. For example, there are links with the UN Global Climate Adaptation programme in Groningen, the University of Groningen and the regional Universities of Applied Sciences (Hanze, Van Hall Larenstein, NHL- Stenden), Furthermore, there is a link with, for example, TU Delft (Climate Adaptation scenarios and technologies), the EU Islands-of-Innovation programme (bottom-up governance and community development) and various international networks and universities, such as the Aalborg University in Denmark , the Lund University in Sweden, the RUN EU regional university network, the PREPARE-EU Network and the Unesco Man and Biosphere Programme. There is even contact with a university in Australia focusing on similar issues on the Great Ocean Road.
The Holwerd aan Zee Foundation and HCA are part of an extensive network of networks and can rely (as volunteers) on professionals and interest groups. With experts in the fields of nature, agriculture, recreation and tourism, marketing, liveability, water and hydraulic engineering, sustainability and circularity, silt and morphology, governance and the EU. These may be people from universities (RUG, WUR and TU Delft) or the Wadden Academy, Circular Fryslân, the Frisian and Dutch Marketing organisations (NBTC / Merk Fryslân) or, for example, the Delta Technology Taskforce and the G11 (largest nature conservation organisations in the Netherlands).
In addition, Holwerd aan Zee works on a day-to-day basis with the Lauwersoog silt hub, the entrepreneurs of Ameland, Dokkum and Holwerd. When it comes to working on the 'Future-proof agricultural agenda', cooperation takes place with the farmers and farming organisations (Waadrâne and Noardlike Fryske Walden) and the nature organisation in the area (it Fryske Gea). The added value of the cooperation is that the often suggested conflicts of interest between farming-economy and nature disappear. Having the above network partners at the table together in our project office creates a shared interest and intrinsic motivation to move the area forward. This succeeds only because everyone has to make some degree of concession. So far, we are working together in very good harmony. This is perhaps the biggest benefit of our bottom-up approach.
The large-scale involvement of education in a bottom-up initiative, such as Holwerd aan Zee, is unique. Cooperation between education and practice proves very difficult in reality. The fact that more than 100 students participate on average per year through the HCA is unheard of in the Netherlands elsewhere. According to experts, what the HCA does is unique.
The uniqueness also has to do with the scale of the Holwerd aan Zee project (a project exceeding €80 million), the area development involved and the candidacy for Unesco Biosphere status, which is unique for the Netherlands. All together, a wonderful testing ground for the development of the Wadden Coast.
The help of several colleges and universities from the North of the country and the rest of the Netherlands and the involvement of secondary education in the field of green and tourism have already produced many useful research reports that have often been used in the presentations of the project. Sometimes, too, it is the HCA students who hold up a mirror to the Holwerd aan Zee Foundation, preventing wishful thinking or blind spots.
Involving education is appropriate for any other area development or project of any size. It is important to invite the students to the area to connect them with the area (the village and the nature of the Wadden Sea). For some students, this is a special experience they will remember in 40 years' time. The education sector is keen to learn from participatory and applied research that is of use to residents.
That is why the HCA has written a Research Programme with concrete questions from the area or project that connects to various levels of education and aims to develop and introduce Design Based Education and Design Based Research. The Research Programme is also for 'Ateliers' that support practice-based education.
The involvement of education in major projects and area developments can be successful elsewhere, as long as education is a separate component. So not as an afterthought but as a significant part of the project. Just as communication is, for instance. This requires manpower in supervision, but the deployment of young professionals also provides a lot of added value.
Meanwhile, it is a wonderful opportunity to connect many young people with the project who, in turn, can be good ambassadors of the project. Education also helps to persuade other organisations to make subsidies available. Furthermore, education involvement generates a lot of goodwill. This is important for local, regional and national (financial) support. The media also find student and youth involvement important in their coverage, so it generates more free publicity.
Holwerd aan Zee approach is a form of co-creation. It is successful because of the bottom-up initiative with help from governments. Bottom-up meets top-down, without taking the initiative from the village. The HCA also works with the bottom-up approach in a sense.
The HCA works primarily with teachers who want to work from intrinsic value in the practice of Holwerd aan Zee. So no cooperation with top-down forced cooperation imposed by the management but through teachers' enthusiasm. The door is also always open to students from other educational institutions for graduation assignments or internships. Even if there is no cooperation between the HCA and their education.
Important conditions for educational participation are not imposed. However, the HCA often asks for innovative solutions and to think out of the box. And not to pay too much attention to restrictive rules and zoning plans that only block creativity. Money is also not a factor when it comes to solutions. (Money can always be found for good plans).
By investing a lot of time in education, the HCA generates a very nice return every year.
The main global challenges the HCA is working on at local level, which can be traced back to 10 of the UN's 17 SDGs, are good education, climate adaptation, biodiversity on land and in water (fish migration, breeding islands), water quality, healthy economic development of the Wadden Coast, salinisation, agriculture, food supply, innovation, sustainability, circularity and capturing CO2 in the new and rejuvenated salt marshes. And last but nog least- as the most important precondition - a new co-creative way of working together by combining bottom-up with the help of top-down and lots of input from our HCA students.
"Real change starts from the bottom up," said Frans Timmermans. This is the modus operandi of the HCA and Holwerd aan Zee to the full. His right-hand man, Diederik Samson, has also said once that Holwerd aan Zee and its bid for Unesco Biosphere status is exactly what the Green Deal is meant for. Samson made this statement during the Unesco Biosphere symposium in February 2021.
Holwerd aan Zee as a project is an example of how the residents of a village - from the bottom up - can make a big difference on a regional scale and can be an example of how the biodiversity and liveability of an area can be advanced. Holwerd by the Sea costs €112 million according to the cost-benefit analysis, but yields between €166 and €199 million. And that does not even include the huge ecological plus of the freshwater saltwater transition, fish migration, the rejuvenation of the salt marsh and the added ecological value inside and outside the dike, translated into euros.
Holwerd aan Zee - and the involvement of education - can be achieved anywhere. And the experience is that this is the only way to bring about change. Any large-scale initiative from above is doomed to fail due to lack of support, involvement and ownership. Ideal is the method used in Holwerd by combining bottom-up with top-down support.
2013 Start of Holwerd aan Zee (annex)
2015 Start Living Lab Wadden Coast (name change in 2022)
2015 Start of collaboration with Nordwin College Leeuwarden (secondary green vocational education)
2016 First research reports University of Applied Sciences Van Hall Larenstein and Inholland University of Applied Sciences
2016-2018 Cooperation with more Universities of Applied Sciences and Universities
2021 Candidacy for Unesco Biosphere Reserve Wadden Coast
2022 Start of internationalisation and transition to Holwerd Coast Academy
2022 Connection to international university network
2023 Application HCA (and winning) the New European Bauhaus Prize
2023 Formulated ambition: improved website and digital accessibility of the hundreds of research reports produced so far
2023 Expand (inter)national contacts with education and knowledge institutes in the Netherlands, Europe and the rest of the world via, among others, the Unesco Biosphere Regions.
2023 Transition of the research programme in line with the Green Deal
2025 Engagement of 1,000 national and international students via the HCA at Holwerd aan Zee and the Unesco Biosphere Area Wadden Coast in preparation for the Green Deal for the Wadden Coast
2026 Submission of Green Deal Wadden Coast
With the research programme, which focuses on the working area in and around Holwerd aan Zee and the (candidate) Unesco Biosphere area, the HCA contributes directly to the competences of young professionals needed for a green transition to a sustainable and circular world. Students of all levels of education and all ages are challenged to think out of the box about sustainable tourism, nature development, sustainable agriculture and the effects of climate change, among others.
Thinking out of the box is possible because the working area is also totally out of the box. Holwerd aan Zee is not only literally but also figuratively a breakthrough for man and nature. Holwerd aan Zee is basically impossible. The Dutch build dykes; they don't normally break through them. Yet the plan is to start implementing in 2025. Students contribute to this directly or indirectly and are asked to think critically about what has been achieved so far in terms of sustainability and are given the opportunity to develop vision and apply the latest innovations to the area. Without harming key values in the area and preferably by leaving the area ecologically with a plus.
Students are encouraged to contribute to the area through the HCA and at the same time get acquainted with the way of working that fits the DNA of Holwerd aan Zee. This is also the way of working that is necessary to tackle sustainability and other major social challenges of today.
