Dutch Water Management Research Articles

Transition Processes in Dutch Spatial Planning and Water Management: A Shift to the Natural

Climate change is causing more extreme weather conditions in the Netherlands. In response, local governments such as Provinces, Municipalities, and regional Water Boards are encouraged to explore more nature-inclusive ways to keep society safe from flooding and drought. This is considered a transition from the earlier belief that environmental and societal challenges can be solved solely through technical engineering. Instead, landscape-based, climate-adaptive visions offer alternatives on how Dutch regions can maintain water security while also incorporating space for biodiversity, climate mitigation, healthy livelihood and expanding populations. So far, not much is known about the challenges project leaders from different organisations and local governments are facing during the development and implementation of such visions. To address this gap, we used the concept of learning history to build an archive capturing the insider perspective of project leaders tasked with co-creating landscape-based, climate-adaptive visions for future spatial planning and water management across four regions of the Netherlands. By observing and interviewing project leaders, we noticed how co-creating long-term visions enabled more climate-conscious dialogues between local government authorities and civil stakeholder groups. Reflecting on this archive, we gained insights into the strategic challenges associated with adopting biophysical processes as a foundational framework for future spatial development and policy-making. Furthermore, we documented examples of tactical approaches employed by project leaders to navigate these challenges effectively.

A modeller’s fingerprint on hydrodynamic decision support modelling

Model results can have far-reaching societal implications, requiring fit-for-purpose models. However, model output is resulting from a particular path chosen with each modelling decision. We interviewed fourteen modellers in the Dutch water management sector in order to study how decision support hydrodynamic modellers make modelling decisions. An inductive-content analysis was performed. We identified eight motivation-categories. Individual and team considerations mostly motivate modelling decisions. We identified patterns between the motivation-categories and their occurrence across modelling steps. Modelling decisions during model implementation were found to be more in the modeller’s direct sphere of influence, while decisions concerning model structure and data selection more outside of it. So, even though modellers can leave their fingerprint, their sphere of influence and thus their fingerprint’s clarity is bound by institutionalised predefined decisions. Thus, models and their results are shaped within a broader sphere than the modeller’s alone, requiring a broader consideration of organisations and standards.

Making Rivers, Producing Futures: The Rise of an Eco-Modern River Imaginary in Dutch Climate Change Adaptation

In the field of climate change adaptation, the future matters. River futures influence the way adaptation projects are implemented in rivers. In this paper, we challenge the ways in which dominant paradigms and expert claims monopolise the truth concerning policies and designs of river futures, thereby sidelining and delegitimising alternative river futures. So far, limited work has been performed on the power of river futures in the context of climate change adaptation. We conceptualised the power of river futures through river imaginaries, i.e., collectively performed and publicly envisioned reproductions of riverine socionatures mobilised through truth claims of social life and order. Using the Border Meuse project as a case study, a climate change adaptation project in a stretch of the river Meuse in the south of the Netherlands, and a proclaimed success story of climate adaptation in Dutch water management, we elucidated how three river imaginaries (a modern river imaginary, a market-driven imaginary, and an eco-centric river imaginary) merged into an eco-modern river imaginary. Importantly, not only did the river futures merge, but their aligned truth regimes also merged. Thus, we argue that George Orwell’s famous quote, “who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past” can be extended to “who controls the future, controls how we see and act in the present, and how we rediscover the past”.

Waterbeheer en ideologische belangen in de premoderne Nederlanden

This article argues that the long-term development of premodern Dutch water management was partly shaped through a combination of institutional factors, and cultural norms and values. Departing from the institutional focus in the narrow sense that predominates in Milja van Tielhof’s Consensus and conflict, it makes the case that historians should take into account the influence of changes in the nature and ideology of the Dutch political elite between the late medieval ‘princely period’ and the early modern Dutch Republic. This is mainly demonstrated in reference to changes around the ideological precept of the Common Good (bonum commune). Using a combination of late medieval and early modern examples, the central contention is that the oligarchical elite that came to dominate both water management and the overarching political structure of the Dutch Republic, acquired a new notion of ‘shared interests’ due to their engagement on all political levels of the new state.

Development of subsurface drainage systems: Discharge – retention – recharge

Sufficient freshwater is needed for water dependent sectors such as agriculture, nature, drinking water, and industry. However, even in low-lying, flood prone countries like the Netherlands, climate change, weather extremes, economic growth, urbanization, land subsidence and increased food production will make it more complex to guarantee sufficient freshwater for all sectors. Furthermore, the frequency and amplitude of extremely dry and wet weather conditions is expected to increase. The current Dutch water management system is not designed to anticipate these extremes. Over the last decades, drained Dutch agricultural fields, land consolidation and urbanization resulted in declining groundwater tables. Additionally, the fresh water demand of different sectors (agriculture, industry, drinking water) increased, causing an increased pressure on the regional groundwater system. As a consequence, the annual groundwater table in sandy soil areas dropped over time with the effect that, nowadays, fresh water is becoming scarce in dry periods. In this paper we provide insight in the shifting water management strategy in the Netherlands (1950–2020), with the corresponding drainage systems, developing from conventional drainage (approx. 1950–1990), to controlled drainage (1990’s onwards), climate adaptive drainage (2010 onwards) and subirrigation systems (2018 onwards). Furthermore, we provide insight in the effect of subirrigation on groundwater levels and crop yields, based on both international literature and measurements of Dutch field pilots. Although subirrigation can contribute to improved soil moisture conditions for crop growth on field scale, we show that the water volume needed for subirrigation can be large and could put a significant pressure on the available regional water sources. Therefore, efficient and responsible use of the available external water sources for subirrigation (e.g. surface water, treated waste water, or groundwater) is required. Finally, the implementation of controlled drainage with subirrigation asks for correct implementation in the regional balance: it requires an integral, catchment-wide approach.

Enhancing the Use of Flood Resilient Spatial Planning in Dutch Water Management. A Study of Barriers and Opportunities in Practice

Around the world, deltaic and coastal regions like the Netherlands are facing challenges from climate, change such as sea-level rise as well as more frequent and extreme natural events. Since 2009, the Dutch government has tried to mitigate flood vulnerability by deploying a balanced mix of flood protection measures, resilient spatial planning and crisis management (Multi-Layer Safety). However, recent evaluations have concluded that resilient spatial planning is (too) limitedly applied in practice. This article aims to understand the barriers and opportunities for resilient spatial planning in flood risk management by comparing two cases where resilient spatial planning was opted for: Dordrecht and the IJssel-Vecht Delta. The study suggests a large gap between the wide array of possible measures, and those that are actually realized in practice. Three physical-spatial barriers were identified: maximum flood depths, lack of space, and rigidity of the existing built environment. Additionally, institutional-organizational barriers were found, including: a false, low or non-existent safety perception or risk awareness, and therefore a lack of urgency to act; a lack of political and societal support; a suboptimal collaboration between stakeholders; ambiguity regarding responsibilities; finances and a cost-benefit imbalance; and a lack of human capital. Subsequently, the article explores possibilities to overcome these barriers. Overcoming these barriers can pave pathways for flood resilient spatial planning. The institutional-organizational barriers appear surmountable, whereas the physical-spatial barriers prove to be more problematic and form the most important restrictive factor for resilient spatial planning in flood risk management.

Conditions for Co-Creation in Infrastructure Projects: Experiences from the Overdiepse Polder Project (The Netherlands)

In recent decades, stakeholder engagement had been gaining momentum in planning practice. More recently, at the heart of the discussions about collaborative endeavours stands the concept of co-creation, an umbrella term for multiple forms of collaboration between stakeholders, which is seen as an approach for fostering new and innovative solutions for highly complex challenges. Despite this idyllic representation, co-creation does not always lead to positive outcomes. One reason is that co-creation poses major operationalization challenges, which make it a significant subject for research. In this article, we explore the conditions that allow co-creation practices aimed at fostering innovation and creativity in infrastructure projects to take place and flourish. Based on the review of literature on co-creation, on the analysis of project-related documents, and on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with the stakeholders, this article follows the co-creation process of the Overdiepse polder project, part of the innovative Dutch water management programme ‘Room for the River’. The results show that co-creation is an iterative process that depends on conditions related to the context, the characteristics of the stakeholders and their relationships, but also on the design and dynamics of the process. The results of this study can be of help to researchers, academics, and professionals interested in studying or applying co-creative approaches.

Going Dutch in the Mekong Delta: a framing perspective on water policy translation

ABSTRACT In response to the rising climatic impacts on worldwide urbanized deltas, the Netherlands has strategically and politically framed Dutch water management as a global water solution for improving water safety and flood protection in other countries such as Vietnam. Being renowned for its water management approach, the Netherlands is particularly active in sharing water knowledge, insights, and policies internationally. This paper connects a framing perspective to policy translation studies to understand the role of language and meaning-making in the cross-border travel of policies. Adopting a framing perspective, it presents four dimensions of water policy translation concerning how policy frames are being created and interpreted – during the cross-border travel. The paper follows the process of the Dutch water management approach being ‘packaged’ as global water solutions and ‘translated’ to inform the development of the Vietnamese Mekong Delta Plan of 2013. The results show that although similar concepts, metaphors and narratives could be witnessed in this translation process, the local use and interpretation of these concepts remain challenging. Inclusive engagement, shared and comprehensive understanding, and continuous exchange and learning processes could help to improve cross-border policy-making for sustainable delta management.

OECD water governance principles on the local scale – an exploration in Dutch water management

ABSTRACT The past two decades have witnessed increasing global concern about the need for sustainable water and land management in an era of rapid change, and persistent water insecurity. Good water governance is a prerequisite to improve water management all over the world. The OECD Water Governance Initiative developed Water Governance Principles to enhance the process from water policy design to implementation. This contribution aims to examine how the OECD Water Governance Principles fit actual water governance on the local scale. Therefore a Dutch case is employed here to almost serve as a benchmark test for the framework of the OECD water governance principles.

Community-based initiatives in the Dutch water domain: the challenge of double helix alignment

ABSTRACTCommunity-based initiatives (CBIs) are emerging in many domains such as care, sustainable energy and water management. This paper examined three initiatives in Dutch water management, focusing on their relationship with water boards. CBIs present issues that water boards find difficult to respond to because of two reasons. First, CBIs are demarcated very differently from the formal tasks that water boards pursue. This calls for internal alignment within water boards to respond adequately. Second, CBIs necessitate external alignment with other water-managing governments. Water boards must therefore implement double helix alignment to relate productively to initiatives emerging in society.

Residual Biomass from Dutch Riverine Areas—From Waste to Ecosystem Service

Dutch riverine areas are managed intensively to ensure the provision of various ecosystem services. Vegetation management, including pruning and mowing, produces a woody and grassy biomass as a by-product. In the past, this residual biomass has been treated as a waste product. Now there is a change of perspective; biomass is valued as a potential additional ecosystem service instead of a waste product. In this study, we explore the transition from waste to ecosystem service of residual biomass in Dutch water management organisations. We found several trends in the organisation of biomass use. There is a development away from the traditional approach of choosing the cheapest or easiest way to get rid of biomass towards exploring various uses of biomass that fulfil additional, societally relevant, functions. This trend alters the organisation of vegetation management and subsequent biomass use. Selection based on sustainable biomass uses is gaining importance, and there is a growing desire within public organisations to be able to steer towards sustainable use of residual biomass. However, there is a lack of applicable, objective ranking instruments.

Reconstructing the impasse in the transfer of delta plans: evaluating the translation of Dutch water management strategies to Jakarta, Indonesia

This study takes the stagnation in the transfer of knowledge about strategic delta planning as a starting point and identifies the interplay of constraining factors. We conclude that the way the process of policy transfer is executed is crucial. The Dutch government aims to transfer the Dutch approach to delta planning (labelled ‘the Dutch Delta Approach’) to other – often developing – countries. However, policy transfer is a complex process that depends on a variety of factors. Deadlocks can occur when the transferred knowledge and the corresponding policy ideas are neither adopted nor rejected. Taking the impasse in the transfer process in the National Capital Integrated Coastal Development project in Jakarta as a case study, we demonstrate that fundamental policy change is needed to adopt strategic delta planning in Jakarta and present three interrelated explanations, related to the policy transfer process, that illustrate why this change is not yet observed.

Connecting policy change, experimentation, and entrepreneurs: advancing conceptual and empirical insights

With global environmental problems worsening, policy makers and nonstate actors are looking for viable solutions through policy innovation, entrepreneurship, and experimentation. Research into the use of experiments to innovate is increasing, but the role of experimentation in policy change has yet to be specifically addressed in the context of climate governance. My aim is to improve understanding by examining how entrepreneurs, key agents of change, might use experiments to advance their climate innovations. Policy entrepreneurs can benefit in several ways from using experiments, including assessing public response to new ideas and learning. I address the question: What role can experiments play in an entrepreneur’s change strategies? To answer this, a set of 18 policy experiments from Dutch water management was analyzed to understand how the policy experiments functioned as 4 different policy change strategies. The results revealed that organizers use experiments to evaluate their preformed ideas, to soften local communities to the idea of experimentation, to build broad but centrally controlled coalitions, and to link with influential political actors and national programs to maintain visibility and relevance. These insights formed a list of suggestions that the experiment organizers identified as key to the change strategies. Based on this, a number of recommendations about design choices were made for entrepreneurs who want to experiment. Analyzing experiments as change strategies contributes a novel perspective on how policy experiments function as venues for invention and provides useful suggestions on how experiments can be designed to improve their influence over policy-making processes.

Integrated Public Value Creation through Community Initiatives—Evidence from Dutch Water Management

Governments are increasingly challenged by self-organizing community initiatives that seek to contribute to or even take the lead in public value creation. The reason for citizen-led instead of government-led public value creation is part of two larger governance trends. The first is the increased specialized, mission-oriented approach to large social challenges by government agencies. The second trend is the increased emphasis on accountability, productivity, and efficiency, following the New Public Management philosophy. As a response to these trends, community initiatives challenge the usual mechanisms, principles, and practices of government agencies. These initiatives are characterized by more integrated and inclusive approaches for dealing with societal problems. In turn, government agencies struggle with the way they can organize productive responses to the initiatives communities take in creating public value. In this study, we explore the rationales behind processes of public value creation in which communities take the lead. We explored these processes in Dutch water management. In this highly functionally specialized domain, we compared two cases in which communities take on leadership for integrated initiatives, including other societal functions and tasks adjacent to water management.

Quantitative land evaluation implemented in Dutch water management

Both in land evaluation and in water management quantitative methods, GIS and simulation modelling are well-known techniques for quantifying the effects of changes, such as land use or climate change. For hydrological management decisions information is often required on the effect of those decisions on agricultural production. To serve the needs of different types of users, like water authorities, provinces, drinking water companies and the National Department of Infrastructure and Water Management we developed a toolbox named WaterVision Agriculture as an instrument that can determine effects on crop yield and the farm economy as a result of drought, too wet or too saline conditions for both current and future climatic conditions.WaterVision Agriculture is based on the hydrological simulation model SWAP, the crop growth model WOFOST and farm management and economic assessments such as DairyWise for dairy farming. The WaterVision Agriculture (WVA) project resulted in two products, namely i) an easily applicable tool (also called the WVA-table) and ii) the operational models for hydrology and crop growth SWAP and WOFOST for calculating effects on field scale combined with calculating farm economic results and indirect effects. SWAP simulates water transport in the unsaturated zone using meteorological data, boundary conditions (like groundwater level or drainage) and soil parameters. WOFOST simulates crop growth as a function of meteorological conditions and crop parameters. Using the combination of these process-based models and methods for describing crop management and economic value we derived a meta-model, i.e. a set of easily applicable simplified relations for assessing crop growth as a function of soil type and groundwater level. These relations are based on multiple model runs for at least 72 soil units and the possible groundwater regimes in the Netherlands. The easily applicable tool (WVA-table) uses this meta-model.Applying the meta-model of WaterVision Agriculture should allow for better decisions on land use or soil and water management because the instrument can help to quantify the effects of changes in climate, land use, hydrological conditions or combinations of these effects on agricultural production.

Cultures of Prediction in Atmospheric and Climate Science: Epistemic and Cultural Shifts in Computer-based Modelling and Simulation ed. by Matthias Heymann, Gabriele Gramelsberger, and Martin Mahony

Reviewed by: Cultures of Prediction in Atmospheric and Climate Science: Epistemic and Cultural Shifts in Computer-based Modelling and Simulation ed. by Matthias Heymann, Gabriele Gramelsberger, and Martin Mahony Spencer Weart (bio) Cultures of Prediction in Atmospheric and Climate Science: Epistemic and Cultural Shifts in Computer-based Modelling and Simulation. Edited by Matthias Heymann, Gabriele Gramelsberger, and Martin Mahony. London: Routledge, 2017. Pp. 256. Hardcover $140. We live, as the editors of this valuable book argue, in a "culture of prediction." Algorithms predict how many boxes of cereal a supermarket should order, whether a suspect released on bail might commit a new crime, and what you would like to see next on YouTube. Predictions, supposedly scientific, have become a central element of society, and STS scholars ought to be in the forefront of studying it. To address this issue, a series of workshops wisely focused on case studies of a single narrow but important field: atmospheric science. Weather forecasting is deeply meaningful to most individuals and many businesses, while climate modeling (the subject of most of the chapters in this book) addresses the most urgent existential and political issue of our civilization. Fortunately, scholarship on atmospheric science is burgeoning—the workshops and resulting volume could be assembled by drawing exclusively on the subset of STS scholars and scientists working in northern Europe. The editors offer a general analytical framework for the social practice of prediction, with no more than the usual burden of social studies jargon. Inevitably, most of the analysis restates ideas that STS students will find familiar and obvious—research is often the slave of social demands, etc. But readers with a taste for this sort of work will find it useful to have everything laid out in detail and in order, with thought-provoking phrases such as "domesticating uncertainty" and "cultures of prediction." Most of the value in any such collection lies in the diverse facts and analysis of the individual case histories. You will get no synthesis of the entire subject but a feeling for its general nature, rather as you can learn about a country by visiting a handful of towns. The first set of cases concentrates on the rise of computational models of the general circulation of the atmosphere. Modeling is only one of the two chief areas of modern climate science, the other being the study of past climates. Each area continues to influence scientific and popular thinking, but by the 1970s the modelers had won what the authors would call "epistemic hegemony," at least for prediction. Taking the cases in order, we begin with an overview of nineteenth-century meteorological theory, which proved incapable of representing the general circulation through plain physics equations. Next comes the birth of computational meteorology in 1945–46, as seen in the views and correspondence of key players. A chapter on H. H. Lamb features his groundbreaking but undervalued use of historical data to explore processes of climate change. The next chapter describes a pivotal transformation in the 1970s, when the main thrust of [End Page 505] model research turned from the study of fundamental processes to policy-relevant prediction. The value and even the possibility of understanding processes in detail continued to be debated into the 2000s, as shown in a case study of a French group working on the physics of clouds. A second set of cases comprises histories of the development of regional (and especially national) climate models; of how the Arctic moved from a peripheral to a central element in climate change studies; of approaches to geoengineering with emphasis on modeling, and of geotechnical (soil) models of a failure mode in Dutch dikes. Two final chapters tell the history of efforts by the climate modeling community to analyze and "manage" uncertainties in its predictions and to deploy graphics in communicating the results. Each chapter focuses on a different dynamic, describing choices that were driven by scientific and political details specific to particular places and times. The most common themes are pressure from politics and tensions between different research heuristics. Modern research in the atmospheric sciences is dominated by demands for policy-relevant prediction, demands that inevitably bring contention over rights to knowledge claims...

Stakeholder participation in long term planning of water infrastructure

Taking stakeholders into account while making plans helps to increase legitimacy. But in long-term planning involvement of stakeholders encounters severe problems. It encounters problems because of the misfit in planning horizons between asset manager and stakeholders. Furthermore, the ambiguous and indistinct character of stakeholders’ ambitions makes successful participation difficult. This article explores ways to deal with this problematic nature of stakeholder participation in long-term planning within modern water infrastructure asset management. Following theory, this article presents a typology with four types of possible styles for asset management which also gives rise to specific forms of stakeholder participation: (1) monofunctional - asset manager realizes the main function of its assets and manages them with only an eye on the principle core function of the asset; (2) integrated - asset manager realizes an integral approach of its assets, and manages them with this integral approach in mind; (3) accommodating - asset manager realizes the main function of its assets but accommodates other functions as well; and (4) learning - asset manager is responsible for the main function of its assets, but invites stakeholders to participate, intertwine other functions and to manage, explore and develop the system jointly. The feasibility of these styles of asset management is assessed by looking at four cases with a long-term perspective within Dutch water management. We derived possible characteristics of these styles and accompanying stakeholder participation, seen from a long-term perspective. These characteristics give appropriate directions to deal with the problematic nature of stakeholder participation in long-term issues within modern water and infrastructural asset management.

Solidarity in water management

Adaptation to climate change can be an inclusive and collective, rather than an individual effort. The choice for collective arrangements is tied to a call for solidarity. We distinguish between one-sided (assisting community members in need) and two-sided solidarity (furthering a common interest) and between voluntary and compulsory solidarity. We assess the strength of solidarity as a basis for adaptation measures in six Dutch water management case studies. Traditionally, Dutch water management is characterized by compulsory two-sided solidarity at the water board level. Since the French times, the state is involved through compulsory national solidarity contributions to avoid societal disruption by major floods. In so far as this furthers a common interest, the contributions qualify as two-sided solidarity, but if it is considered assistance to flood-prone areas, they also qualify as one-sided solidarity. Although the Delta Programme explicitly continues on this path, our case studies show that solidarity continues to play an important role in Dutch water management in the process of adapting to a changing climate, but that an undifferentiated call for solidarity will likely result in debates over who should pay what and why. Such discussions can lead to cancellation or postponement of adaptation measures, which are not considered to be in the common interest or result in an increased reliance on local solidarity.

Erratum to: National Adaptation Strategies, what else? Comparing adaptation mainstreaming in German and Dutch water management

Erratum to: National Adaptation Strategies, what else? Comparing adaptation mainstreaming in German and Dutch water management

Do state traditions matter? Comparing deliberative governance initiatives for climate change adaptation in Dutch corporatism and British pluralism

In the emerging field of climate adaptation, deliberative governance initiatives are proposed to yield better adaptation strategies. However, introducing these network-centred deliberations between public and private players may contrast with institutionalized traditions of interest intermediation between state and society. This paper shows how these so-called state traditions affect the processes and outcomes of newly set up deliberative governance initiatives. Because of the similarities in geographical characteristics and the differences in state tradition we conducted a qualitative case study comparison of Dutch and British water management. Our comparison is two-fold. First, we compare deliberative governance initiatives in the different state traditions of the Netherlands and UK. Second, we compare the newly set up deliberative governance initiative to an existing policy regime mainstreaming climate adaptation in a similar state tradition, in our case the Netherlands. We find that: (1) deliberative governance initiatives in the corporatist state tradition of the Netherlands yields learning but shows apathy among politically elected decision-makers compared to deliberative governance initiatives in the pluralist state tradition of the UK where clearly defined rules and responsibilities yields negotiation and action; and (2) a typical corporatist policy regime mainstreaming climate adaption in a corporatist state tradition yields effective and legitimate policy formation but lacks learning.