In recent years stakeholder participation has become a popular topic in flood management. Little is known about how and under which circumstances local stakeholders initiate and develop successful flood management strategies and how governmental actors respond to them. Drawing on theories of social movements, stakeholder participation, and citizenship, this paper analyses how local stakeholder initiatives in the Dutch 'Room for the River' programme evolve and, in turn, influence such governmental plans and actions. The description and comparative analysis of the three cases leads to three conclusions: first, in all cases, forms of local selforganization play a role, but its impacts are highly dependent on the mix of strategies chosen. Second, forms of coproduction between local stakeholders and government actors are the most viable strategy to realize the positive impact of local initiatives. Third, government agencies tend to react to local initiatives defensively. Much depends on timing and connecting to the right people.

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Contemporary socio-economic transformations in South Asia are creating increasingly serious water problems (scarcity, flooding, pollution) and conflicts. Conflicts over water distribution, water-derived benefits, and risks often play out along axes of social differentiation like caste, wealth, and gender. Those with least power, rights, and voice suffer lack of access, exclusion, dispossession, and further marginalisation, resulting in livelihood insecurity or increased vulnerability to risks. In this paper we propose analysing these problems as problems of justice -problems of distribution, recognition, and political participation. Drawing on wider environmental justice approaches, a specific water justice focus needs to include both the specific characteristics of water as a resource and the access, rights, and equity dimensions of its control. We argue that recognising water problems as problems of justice requires a re-politicisation of water, as mainstream approaches to water resources, water governance, and legislation tend to normalise or naturalise their -basically political -distributional assumptions and implications. An interdisciplinary approach that sees water as simultaneously natural (material) and social is important here. We illustrate these conceptual and theoretical suggestions with evidence from India.

Extreme river discharges, floods and debates about climate change triggered a shift in flood protection policy in the Netherlands from infrastructural to spatial measures. The new policy directive of ‘Room for the River’, details of which were introduced in 2000, should prepare the country for future peak discharges. In order to deal with ‘residual risk’, the concept of ‘calamity polders’ for ‘controlled flooding’ was launched in the same year. In this contribution we discuss the local protests against these plans against the backdrop of changed thinking about flood protection. We analyse the emergence of the concept, the commission established to inquire into the calamity polder plans, as well as local resistance and the counter‐expertise it mobilised. We conclude that the choice to limit public participation in the debates about calamity polders has backfired. It has contributed to the shelving of the plans while increasing public distrust of flood policy. At the same time this episode has created some awareness among policy‐makers of the importance of dialogue with the inhabitants of areas affected by flood policy measures.

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