Adaptation to climate change is a complex process of societal change and should be studied as such. Attention to issues of climate adaptation has increased considerably over the past few years. Until now, less attention has been paid to questions concerning normative issues of societal change. In this paper we will address three important questions on the normative level: (a) What kind of legal and policy principles should public and private actors take to heart when formulating and implementing adaptation measures? (b) Which societal interests should be protected by a climate-adaptation policy and in what order? (c) To what extent are governments responsible for adaptation to climate change and what are the responsibilities to be borne by private parties and citizens? We will treat these questions from a mix of legal, administrative, and economic perspectives. We conclude with some recommendations on how to deal with these normative aspects in policy-making processes.
The profitability of the French agricultural sector has fallen over the last two decades, leading to the suggestion of a "rupture in technical progress". Additionally, the intellectual property regime in force has contributed to the erosion of the cultivated biodiversity, limiting plant resiliency to climate change and other hazards. In the face of these challenges, agroecological farming practices are a viable alternative. This paper investigates the positive and negative aspects associated with the development of alternative seed procurement networks in France. The findings indicate that peasant seed networks can effectively contribute to overcoming many of the structural blockages with which French agriculture is confronted, but that yield concerns; higher information and supervisory costs, as well as the unfavourable legislative context, constitute key challenges to their development. However, these could be partially or totally eliminated if adequate policies are implemented. In this regard, the recommendations are to: (i) strengthen the dialogue with farmers in the shaping of policies related to the use of plant genetic resources; (ii) abrogate the "obligatory voluntary contribution" on farm-saved seeds; (iii) diversify the collection of Centres for Biological Resources, increase their number, and democratize their access; (iv) harmonize the French and European regime on intellectual property; and (v) encourage participatory research
The Netherlands is a country that lives on water and has a long and fascinating history of water management. Yet, water quality in the Netherlands is not good, and a recent prediction made by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving), shows that by 2027 between 95% and 60% of Dutch waters will not fulfil the standards established under the Water Framework Directive. Clearly, despite longstanding Dutch experience in water management, the effectiveness of implementation of EU Water law can still be improved upon. In this chapter, we will provide an initial set of recommendations to improve the effectiveness of European water law by way of a better implementation of the substantive requirements of the Water Framework Directive and the procedural requirements of the Water Framework Directive and the Aarhus Convention in the Dutch legal order. Effective environmental policies, as laid down in EU environmental law, require both substantive and procedural elements. Only if both are implemented well can we speak of effective environmental or water legislation and protection. Indeed, despite the Ministry having repeated its mantra that Dutch water law is in line with the Water Framework Directive part of the ineffectiveness highlighted above can be attributed to the fact that the Dutch implementation of the Directive diverges from the manner in which the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) interprets the Water Framework Directive. Furthermore, shortcomings could derive from the manner in which the Netherlands implements the Aarhus Convention. In the so-called Weser case, rendered in July 2015, the ECJ clarified that the environmental goals established under Article 4 of the Directive are an obligation binding upon each phase of a decision-making process; hence, at the level of plans and programmes as well at the level of decisions concerning specific projects. There is, therefore, a direct linkage between the environmental goals of the Directive and the decision to ...
Many river systems in Europe have altered morphology and deteriorated ecosystems due to human interference. We demonstrate how conflicting interests of nature, society and economics in the Dutch–German Ems-Dollard system complicate achieving the nature restoration targeted by the EU Water Framework Directive. This article provides a multidisciplinary perspective on the natural characteristics of a water system and the practical implementation of regulation and policy in a transboundary setting. Important shortcomings of EU and national laws and directives are the static constraints for protection of demarcated habitats under EU directives, which do not do justice to natural hydro-morphodynamic processes.
The Water Framework Directive has introduced a new governance approach that offers implementing agencies in EU Member States policy discretion to implement ecological ambitions. The aim of this paper was to gain insight into the way regional actors use this discretion and into the rationale behind their behaviour. Our research revealed that in regional implementation processes in the Netherlands, limited ecological ambitions have been framed due to several complications. These complications also occur in other EU Member States. As it might be possible to reduce some of the complications by improving collaboration, exchange and learning between the actors involved, the paper concludes by outlining the important role that communities of practice might play in the implementation process of water policy at the regional level.
Post-flood policies and compensation regimes tend to focus on the resilience of public spaces and improving the adaptive capacity of future private property developments. This article focuses on the instruments associated with the resilience of existing privately owned residential buildings from the perspective of post-flood policies and compensation regimes. By reviewing the relevant legal and policy landscapes it aims to provide mutual lessons learned between the EU, its member states and the US and to set forth generally applicable recommendations for improving post-flood policies for existing buildings.
The Nitrates Directive (91/676/EEC) offers EU Member States the unique choice to apply the nitrate regime in either designated areas or on their entire territory. The Netherlands has opted for a whole territory approach but is tempted to change this policy. This article investigates the legal options of the Netherlands to switch from a whole territory approach to a designated area approach. It also investigates two alternative possibilities to create a more area-based implementation of the Nitrates Directive in the Netherlands within a whole territory approach. The alternatives are (i) a further differentiation of the current manure policy and (ii) the possibility to integrate the implementation of the Nitrates Directive and the Water Framework Directive. The results of the research are placed in a European perspective.
This chapter presents and applies an interdisciplinary (law & governance) method for assessing the climate resilience of critical infrastructural network sectors. Broadly applicable, this methodological framework comprises three phases, within which six logically arranged steps are set out. The central assessment criterion for climate resilience, the expected effectiveness of responsibilities for climate adaptation, is operationalized through six indicators: awareness, proactivity, appropriateness, explicitness, transparency, and legitimacy. Apart from academic purposes, this assessment framework can prove useful to law and policy makers in assessing and (re)developing relevant arrangements governing critical infrastructural network sectors. To give a view of the functioning of the assessment framework, this framework is applied in two case studies addressing the Dutch electricity and internet sectors. These case studies show a rather low level of expected effectiveness of responsibilities for climate adaptation in both sectors. Apart from their exemplary purpose, these case studies provide insights into potential pitfalls, which can be relevant for increasing climate resilience of other network sectors in the Netherlands, other EU Member States, and abroad.
Over the past several decades, environmental governance has made substantial progress in addressing environmental change, but emerging environmental problems require new innovations in law, policy, and governance. While expansive legal reform is unlikely to occur soon, there is untapped potential in existing laws to address environmental change, both by leveraging adaptive and transformative capacities within the law itself to enhance social-ecological resilience and by using those laws to allow social- ecological systems to adapt and transform. Legal and policy research to date has largely overlooked this potential, even though it offers a more expedient approach to addressing environmental change than waiting for full-scale environmental law reform. We highlight examples from the United States and the European Union of untapped capacity in existing laws for fostering resilience in social-ecological systems. We show that governments and other governance agents can make substantial advances in addressing environmental change in the short term—without major legal reform—by exploiting those untapped capacities, and we offer principles and strategies to guide such initiatives.
Diversity in flood risk management approaches is often considered to be a strength. However, in some national settings, and especially for transboundary rivers, variability and incompatibility of approaches can reduce the effectiveness of flood risk management. Placed in the context of increasing flood risks, as well as the potential for flooding to undermine the European Union's sustainable development goals, a desire to increase societal resilience to flooding has prompted the introduction of a common European Framework. We provide a legal and policy analysis of the implementation of the Floods Directive (2007/60/EC) in six countries: Belgium (Flemish region), England, France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden. Evaluation criteria from existing legal and policy literature frame the study of the Directive and its effect on enhancing or constraining societal resilience by using an adaptive governance approach. These criteria are initially used to analyze the key components of the EU approach, before providing insight of the implementation of the Directive at a national level. Similarities and differences in the legal translation of European goals into existing flood risk management are analyzed alongside their relative influence on policy and practice. The research highlights that the effect of the Floods Directive on increasing societal resilience has been nationally variable, in part because of its focus on procedural obligations, rather than on more substantive requirements. Analysis shows that despite a focus on transboundary river basin management, existing traditions of flood risk management have overridden objectives to harmonize flood risk management in some cases. The Directive could be strengthened by requiring more stringent cooperation and providing the competent authorities in international river basin districts with more power. Despite some shortcomings in directly affecting flood risk outcomes, the Directive has positively stimulated discussion and flood risk management planning in countries ...
European countries face increasing flood risks because of urbanization, increase of exposure and damage potential, and the effects of climate change. In literature and in practice, it is argued that a diversification of strategies for flood risk management (FRM), including flood risk prevention (through proactive spatial planning), flood defense, flood risk mitigation, flood preparation, and flood recovery, makes countries more flood resilient. Although this thesis is plausible, it should still be empirically scrutinized. We aim to do this. Drawing on existing literature we operationalize the notion of "flood resilience" into three capacities: capacity to resist; capacity to absorb and recover; and capacity to transform and adapt. Based on findings from the EU FP7 project STAR-FLOOD, we explore the degree of diversification of FRM strategies and related flood risk governance arrangements at the national level in Belgium, England, France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden, as well as these countries' achievement in terms of the three capacities. We found that the Netherlands and to a lesser extent Belgium have a strong capacity to resist, France a strong capacity to absorb and recover, and especially England a high capacity to transform and adapt. Having a diverse portfolio of FRM strategies in place may be conducive to high achievements related to the capacities to absorb/recover and to transform and adapt. Hence, we conclude that diversification of FRM strategies contributes to resilience. However, the diversification thesis should be nuanced in the sense that there are different ways to be resilient. First, the three capacities imply different rationales and normative starting points for flood risk governance, the choice between which is inherently political. Second, we found trade-offs between the three capacities, e.g., being resistant seems to lower the possibility to be absorbent. Third, to explain countries' achievements in terms of resilience, the strategies' feasibility in specific physical circumstances and their fit in existing institutional contexts (appropriateness), as well as the establishment of links between strategies, through bridging mechanisms, have also been shown to be crucial factors. We provide much needed reflection on the implications of this diagnosis for governments, private parties, and citizens who want to increase flood resilience.
European countries face increasing flood risks because of urbanization, increase of exposure and damage potential, and the effects of climate change. In literature and in practice, it is argued that a diversification of strategies for flood risk management (FRM), including flood risk prevention (through proactive spatial planning), flood defense, flood risk mitigation, flood preparation, and flood recovery, makes countries more flood resilient. Although this thesis is plausible, it should still be empirically scrutinized. We aim to do this. Drawing on existing literature we operationalize the notion of "flood resilience" into three capacities: capacity to resist; capacity to absorb and recover; and capacity to transform and adapt. Based on findings from the EU FP7 project STAR-FLOOD, we explore the degree of diversification of FRM strategies and related flood risk governance arrangements at the national level in Belgium, England, France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden, as well as these countries' achievement in terms of the three capacities. We found that the Netherlands and to a lesser extent Belgium have a strong capacity to resist, France a strong capacity to absorb and recover, and especially England a high capacity to transform and adapt. Having a diverse portfolio of FRM strategies in place may be conducive to high achievements related to the capacities to absorb/recover and to transform and adapt. Hence, we conclude that diversification of FRM strategies contributes to resilience. However, the diversification thesis should be nuanced in the sense that there are different ways to be resilient. First, the three capacities imply different rationales and normative starting points for flood risk governance, the choice between which is inherently political. Second, we found trade-offs between the three capacities, e.g., being resistant seems to lower the possibility to be absorbent. Third, to explain countries' achievements in terms of resilience, the strategies' feasibility in specific physical ...
In the Netherlands land subsidence is a continuously ongoing process. Consequently, an increasing number of people and economic assets are exposed to subsidence, damage costs are soaring, and flood risk and greenhouse gas emissions are increasing. In some areas tipping points have already been reached, where current land-use can no longer be maintained without considerable costs, underlining the urgency to take action. Together with a consortium consisting of universities, research institutes, governmental agencies, public and private partners we have developed a national, multidisciplinary research programme aiming to develop an integrative approach to achieve feasible, legitimate and sustainable solutions for managing the negative societal effects of land subsidence, connecting fundamental research on subsidence processes to socio-economic impact of subsidence and to governance and legal framework design. The program is designed to co-create insights that help to effectively mitigate and adapt to subsidence within the Netherlands by making major improvements in measuring and modeling the processes and consequences of subsidence, identifying, developing and critically evaluating control measures and designing governance and legal approaches that facilitate their implementation. Hereto we will develop (a) new satellite-based technology to measure, attribute and monitor subsidence, (b) solid understanding of the interacting multiple processes contributing to total subsidence, (c) sophisticated physical and economic numerical models to predict human-induced subsidence rates and impacts, and (d) implementation strategies that go beyond technical measures, to strengthen governance and financing capacities as well as legal frameworks. This fully integrated approach deals with all impacts of land subsidence on society and the economy.
