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Accountability has hardly been studied in the governance of climate change adaptation. This paper develops a framework for assessing the accountability of interactive governance arrangements for local adaptation. This framework is based on five important accountability mechanisms: Clear responsibilities and mandates, Transparency, Political oversight, Citizen control and Checks and sanctions. For illustration purposes, the proposed framework is applied to the case of a Dutch local adaptation governance arrangement. The application shows that the five proposed mechanisms and their operationalizations offer a valid assessment of the accountability of such arrangements. It also raises some challenges, such as the tensions between accountability and flexibility, legitimacy and effectiveness; the potentially important roles of trust and of the political skills of central actor(s) in the arrangement in raising accountability, and the potential need to distinguish between arrangements for policy planning and for service delivery.

Public participation is a central topic in urban water governance. With the spread of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), urban water governance has undergone prominent changes, including the process and outcomes of public participation. This paper aims to systematically review existing scientific and grey literature on the use of ICT to facilitate public participation in urban water governance. Based on a search in Google Scholar, we have collected 33 published texts and discerned 32 case studies, which we analysed according to the Cochrane systematic review methodology. We found that ICT tools allow many citizens to be better informed and co-produce water services with a government. Furthermore, ICT tools have the potential to help in efficiency and effectiveness of urban water service provision. However, such tools provide few opportunities for higher modes of discussion and deliberation, and grant limited authority to participants to influence decision-making processes. This finding raises concerns about the unwarranted optimism of "digital democracy" proponents in the urban water sector. Public participation at the end of the day is political by nature, which cannot be cancelled out by ICT tools alone.

Interest in environmental policy integration (EPI) has recently been strong, both in the literature and in practice. We explore Dutch initiatives to integrate noise management into spatial planning policy in light of the body of literature on EPI. The main approaches of EPI are translated into a conceptual framework consisting of organizational, procedural, and contextual factors. The objective of this literature review is to relate paradigm shifts and policy innovations regarding noise management and spatial planning to empirical windows of opportunity for and barriers to implementation of EPI. It shows how instruments allowing a flexible approach and deviation from standards at the local level fit in with the discourse on decentralized and area-oriented policy. The analysis suggests that procedural and decision-making rules and organizational arrangements can bridge implementation gaps in local-level planning practice. However, EPI in the Netherlands has not solved the noise problem, and the number of affected inhabitants is increasing. We conclude the paper by examining the conceptual and normative issues affecting the integration and prioritization of noise management policy.

PurposeThe paper seeks to propose the basic competencies of environmental social scientists regarding policy analysis for sustainable development. The ultimate goal is to contribute to an improvement of educational programmes in higher education by suggesting a toolbox that should be integrated in the curriculum.Design/methodology/approachStarting from the basic research questions regarding governance for sustainable development, five methods are identified capable of answering the following questions: reconstruction of policy theories; stakeholder analysis; impact assessment; cost‐benefit analysis; discourse analysis. Relevant information was collected through a literature review and practical experience by the authors.FindingsThese include: minimum content of the toolbox with methods of policy analysis for sustainable development; examples of how the toolbox can be applied; strengths and weaknesses of the methods; specification of competencies of environmental social scientists active in the area of policy analysis for sustainable development.Practical implicationsThe paper proposes which methods of policy analysis for sustainable development should be integrated in higher education as well as how this should be done.Originality/valueThe paper systematically analyses the implications of the policy context in the domain of sustainable development for policy analysis in this area. In addition it gives a review of five basic methods: how they can be used to analyse policy issues from a sustainable development perspective. Aiming at reinforcing the input of scientific research in policy‐making, the paper eventually aims to promote sustainable development.

The mode of planing for infrastructure has changed in the Netherlands. As elsewhere, a hierarchic mode of planning has been replaced by regulatory relationships among stakeholders. The authors present a lens through which some of these changes are brought into focus: the new form of cooperation, called 'interactive planning', is characterized in terms of 'political space', 'architecture', and 'action mechanisms'. The discussion is focused on four projects in which the transition to a new planning mode occurred while the project was being developed. The authors also revisit the implementation of interactive planning.

The authors analyze agri-environmental schemes (AES) from the perspective of new institutional economics (NIE). The field of NIE studies the effect of institutions on the decisions of economic actors. Policy is intended to shape institutions and thus influence behavior. NIE is therefore particularly suitable for the analysis of policy programs such as AES. Their aim is to explain some of the management problems that have arisen in AES and to contribute to finding solutions by using insights from NIE. To this end a specific Dutch AES is used as a case study, in which a number of administrative problems are analyzed. These problems prove to be similar to those that have been identified in other European AES, and are related to the ecological efficacy of this particular type of policy program, its economic efficiency, its administrative sustainability, and the level of sociopolitical support it enjoys. The explanation for the problems identified is based on NIE; this approach is also used to identify solutions. The solutions derived from this theory are then compared with the solutions that have been applied in reality. The authors conclude with a discussion of what these lessons imply for AES in general.

In recent decades, foresight has been connected to various disciplines that engage with complex societal problems, leading to specific interpretations of foresight. We offer an interdisciplinary perspective on foresight's increasing use for governance of social-ecological systems (SES). We seek to strengthen the use of foresight in this domain by bridging to insights from other disciplines that can help overcome its limitations. Participatory foresight for SES governance offers potential to elicit thinking about uncertainty and complexity, facilitate dialogue between stakeholders, and improve inclusiveness of governance processes, but often fails to be sufficiently reflexive and politically aware to be truly impactful and inclusive. It can be strengthened, we argue, by a more thorough integration with adjacent research fields: critical futures studies, critical systems theory and environmental governance. We distill key insights from these fields, including the importance of being politically reflexive about whose perspectives are considered, whom foresight processes should benefit, and the importance of co-producing methodology and outcomes. We encourage scholars and practitioners to further explore integration with these fields, highlighting the importance of inter- and transdisciplinary teams. Finally, we offer an example for how limitations of foresight as used in a particular field can be overcome through interdisciplinary integration.