Samenvatting

Floating developments have the potential to mitigate a range of challenges including fluctuating water levels, sea level rise, and pressures on available space on land for housing, energy production and storage, and food production. The national Dutch research project Floating Future is a project which studies how the upscaling of floating structures could offer a climate-proof and viable solution for space limitations and long-term livability in the Dutch Delta, by using a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach. The first year of the Floating Future project brought together a consortium of 44 partners from academia, applied research, business, government, and society to integrate governance, ecological and technological insights. Together we explore possible challenges and bottlenecks and develop a shared vision for upscaling floating solutions for housing, energy, logistics and food in offshore, coastal, and inland contexts. We adopt an iterative approach to PAR in which key stakeholders within the project collaborate towards co-designing a vision for upscaling floating developments which are sustainable, inclusive, and resilient. We are developing the PAR using tools such as the “ClimateCafé” method, a bottom-up approach to facilitating problem framing, capacity building, problem solving, and knowledge-transfer through a series of workshops. In this paper we describe and reflect on the first year of implementation of PAR in the Floating Future project. This methodological discussion provides insights into applications of PAR specifically for future-oriented, speculative, and novel sectors and provides a valuable example of PAR carried out over an extended period with a group of committed stakeholders from a range of disciplinary, societal, and governmental perspectives. Lessons learned from this experience can be applied to other countries and regions interested in engaging multiple disciplines and societal groups in designing a shared vision for upscaling floating infrastructure now and in the future. Keywords: Participatory Action Research; Interdisciplinarity; Futures; Floating Future