Coping with Climate Change in a densely Populated Delta: A Paradigm Shift in Flood and Water Management in The Netherlands

Abstract

The expected effects of climate change and economic and population growth have motivated the Netherlands government to reformulate its policies on flood protection and water management. Flood protection and drainage are needed to make this low‐lying country habitable and suitable for agriculture and other land uses: more than 65% of the Netherlands is protected by dykes against flooding. The likely impacts of climate change in combination with socio‐economic developments call for proactive and innovative plans. The new policies and standards are based on an innovative approach: instead of focusing only on prevention, the new standards take into account both the probability of flooding as well as the potential impacts and risks of flooding, for example the individual risk of being hit by a flood. Based on these new standards, conservation, adaptation and mitigation actions are used to create a multi‐layer safety approach that focuses on the water management system as well as spatial planning. Examples are presented of changes in perspectives and how flood protection, water management and spatial planning are being combined. These examples can be a basis for further adaptation measures in both the Netherlands as well as in other low‐lying countries worldwide. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Cross-sector collaboration within Dutch flood risk governance: historical analysis of external triggers

“…Other issues discussed included multilayer water safety (van den Hurk, Mastenbroek, & Meijerink, 2014). The approach entailed a combination of preventive measures (Layer 1) to improve flood protection (dikes, dams and dunes, as well as creating more space for the rivers); spatial planning (Layer 2) to reduce the possible impact of flooding; and emergency management (Layer 3) to counteract the consequences of flooding (Jorissen & Kraaij, 2016;Ritzema & Van Loon-Steensma, 2017). The multilevel safety approach made explicit the connection between flood safety and spatial development (van den Hurk et al, 2014).…”

“…The multilevel safety approach made explicit the connection between flood safety and spatial development (van den Hurk et al, 2014). The introduction of these new policy concepts has been referred to by many researchers as a paradigm shift (Ritzema & Van Loon-Steensma, 2017;van den Hurk et al, 2014;Ward, Pauw, van Buuren, & Marfai, 2017) towards more collaborative and integrated flood risk governance.…”

“…After years of research and planning, the Dutch government has introduced new safety standards for primary flood defence systems (Jorissen & Kraaij, 2016;Klijn, Asselman, de Kruif, Bloemen, & Haasnoot, 2016;Ritzema & Van Loon-Steensma, 2017;Van Alphen, 2016). The new safety standards refer primarily to the flooding probabilities of polder areas, implying the possible failure of multiple flood defence/dike systems (Van Alphen, 2016).…”

“…The new standards are based on risk, taking into account both the probability and the consequences of a flood. Therefore, flood safety is achieved using the various layers of multilayer safety: preventing flood and limiting the consequences of a floodthat is, water-robust spatial infrastructure and disaster management (Ritzema & Van Loon-Steensma, 2017;van Buuren et al, 2016). Thus, the implementation of new safety standards may also imply spatial measures as part of a risk-based approach to flooding, in which the cost-effectiveness of flood defence systems is weighed against the cost-effectiveness of alternative solutions like spatial measures (De Vries & Wolsink, 2009;Liao, 2012).…”

From divide to nexus: Interconnected land use and water governance changes shaping risks related to water

“…streamflow, runoff, storage and infiltration) (Gao et al 2013;Lu et al 2014;Muñoz-Salinas and Castillo 2015), and changes in management and governance of water resources have also implications for land use (Alemayehu et al 2009;Desta et al 2017;Wang et al 2016). In many cases, changes in land and water use are clearly intertwined, such as in the embankment and canalization of water for flood protection and to support land conversion to agriculture and built-up areas (Marçal et al 2017; Ritzema and Van Loon-Steensma 2017). Due to the interconnectedness of land and water, there have been calls for and analyses of the land-water-nexus and integrated land and water management (Benson and Lorenzoni 2017;Borchardt et al 2016;Chen et al 2018;Ringler et al 2013;Ritzema and Van Loon-Steensma 2017;Rockström et al 2014).…”