Integrating climate change adaptation into Dutch local policies and the role of contextual factors

Abstract

Moving towards a more sustainable adaptation process requires closer integration of policies related to the environment. An important actor in this is the local government. This paper examines to what extend adaptation is currently being integrated into Dutch local policies, and what the role is of a municipality's size, risk and experience in the encountered manifestations of adaptation. First, it was determined that adaptations taking place only anticipate currently perceivable weather extremes -mostly increasing precipitation. Second, it was determined that the realisation of further adaptations is hindered by a strongly sectoral divided reality. Adaptation is now heavily dominated by the water department, while spatial planning and the environment are only limitedly involved. Finally, it was observed that the contextual factor size proved to most important for horizontal policy integration, whereas the contextual factor extreme-weather experience was the most definite for the realisation of adaptations. We conclude that a more sustainable adaptation should first tackle the sectoral divides which requires administrative efforts, for example, professional training. These would preferably be initiated from a vertical direction.

Variations in approaches to urban climate adaptation: Experiences and experimentation from the global South

“…Capacities required for implementing climate adaptation are often constrained by economic (such as funding), institutional (such as unfriendly public policies or laws), political (such as relationships between municipal departments or the relative lack of visibility and power of environmental programs), and competing development considerations, which ultimately crowd out adaptation concerns from the overall planning agenda (Simon, 2012;Chuku, 2010;Mees and Driessen, 2011;Urwin and Jordan, 2008). Internal sectoral divides or an overly sectoral focus on adaptation, such as around key departments like water, also tend to limit a more sustained approach to adaptation planning and implementation (van den Berg and Coenen, 2012).…”

Presenting a Framework to Analyze Local Climate Policy and Action in Small and Medium-Sized Cities

“…Since ecological, social and economic risks are not distributed evenly geographically it is municipalities that are the more vulnerable to these particular risks that benefit most from climate change (adaptation) action. Moreover, risk prone areas (already having experienced disasters due to extreme weather events) are found to be more resilient than their (less risk-prone, less experienced) peers [13].…”

“…Municipalities at locations which are either (or both) vulnerable to climate change extreme weather events or environmental stress (due to some other kind of environmental issue) have been related by researchers to local governments establishing progressive local climate policies, especially in the case of climate change adaptation policy as a response to cope with vulnerability [13,25]. In this sense, 'climate change risk' addresses factors like coastal proximity, ecosystem sensitivity, or proneness to flooding.…”

“…Also, different research communities came into existence, focusing either on mitigation (e.g., [8,9,11,18,19,21,28]) or on adaptation (e.g., [13][14][15][22][23][24]27,32]). Because of the broad variety of concepts that have been developed a literature review was conducted to systematically cluster concepts from these literatures.…”

“…Although many cities have been active to address both adaptation [13][14][15] and mitigation [7,9] oftentimes there appears to be a lack of integration in strategies. Adaptation and mitigation have been distinguished by scientists, policy makers and practitioners as belonging to different sectoral policy domains (e.g., mitigation in the 'energy domain' and adaptation in the 'water domain' [11]).…”