Between adaptability and the urge to control: making long-term water policies in the Netherlands
Triggered by recent flood catastrophes and increasing concerns about climate change, scientists as well as policy-makers increasingly call for making long-term water policies to enable a transformation towards flood resilience. A key question is how to make these long-term policies
adaptive so that they are able to deal with uncertainties and changing circumstances. The paper proposes three conditions for making long-term water policies adaptive, which are then used to evaluate a new Dutch water policy approach called ‘Adaptive Delta Management’. Analysing
this national policy approach and its translation to the Rotterdam region reveals that Dutch policy-makers are torn between adaptability and the urge to control. Reflecting on this dilemma, the paper suggests a stronger focus on monitoring and learning to strengthen the adaptability of long-term
water policies. Moreover, increasing the adaptive capacity of society also requires a stronger engagement with local stakeholders including citizens and businesses.
Keywords: Dutch water management; adaptive policies; flood resilience; flood risk management; strategic planning
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: 1: Department of Spatial Planning and Environment, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands 2: Department of Planning and Transport, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, University of Westminster, London, UK
Publication date: 04 May 2017
- Editorial Board
- Information for Authors
- Subscribe to this Title
- Ingenta Connect is not responsible for the content or availability of external websites
- Access Key
- Free content
- Partial Free content
- New content
- Open access content
- Partial Open access content
- Subscribed content
- Partial Subscribed content
- Free trial content