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The adaptive capacity of institutions in the spatial planning, water, agriculture and nature sectors in the Netherlands

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Abstract

The climate change problem calls for a continuously responding society. This raises the question: Do our institutions allow and encourage society to continuously adapt to climate change? This paper uses the Adaptive Capacity Wheel (ACW) to assess the adaptive capacity of formal and informal institutions in four sectors in the Netherlands: spatial planning, water, agriculture and nature. Formal institutions are examined through an assessment of 11 key policy documents and informal institutions are analysed through four case studies covering each sector. Based on these ACW analyses, both sector-specific and more general strengths and weaknesses of the adaptive capacity of institutions in the Netherlands are identified. The paper concludes that the most important challenge for increasing institutional adaptive capacity lies in combining decentralized, participatory approaches with more top-down methods that generate leadership (visions, goals) standards, instruments, resources and monitoring.

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Notes

  1. www.climatechangesspatialplanning.nl.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge that the research was undertaken in the course of the project - IC12: Institutions for Adaptation: The Capacity and Ability of the Dutch Institutional Framework to Adapt to Climate Change’, which was funded by the Netherlands BSIK-Programme Climate changes Spatial Planning (CcSP).Footnote 1

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, 1018 WV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    J. Gupta & E. Bergsma

  2. Wageningen School of Social Sciences, Wageningen UR, Wageningen, Netherlands

    C. J. A. M. Termeer & G. R. Biesbroek

  3. Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

    M. van den Brink

  4. Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

    P. Jong

  5. Alterra, Wageningen UR, Wageningen, Netherlands

    J. E. M. Klostermann

  6. Institute for Management Research, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands

    S. Meijerink

  7. Faculty of Social Science, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands

    S. Nooteboom

  8. UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Westvest 7, 2611 AX, Delft, The Netherlands

    J. Gupta

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  1. J. Gupta
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Correspondence to J. Gupta.

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Gupta, J., Bergsma, E., Termeer, C.J.A.M. et al. The adaptive capacity of institutions in the spatial planning, water, agriculture and nature sectors in the Netherlands. Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change 21, 883–903 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-014-9630-z

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