Abstract
This article describes and analyzes the implications of uncertainty for the policy analysis and management practices likely to be affected by climate change. It examines these through an extended analysis of water management in the Netherlands. The analysis describes how practice-networks, formed to produce and implement technical assessments, deal with different forms of uncertainty. The analysis focuses on the network concerned with dike safety and demonstrates the manner in which institutional procedures black-box uncertainty and insulate it from critical scrutiny, even by the actors involved in constructing models and administering standards. This analysis is followed by an examination of the relationship between experts and citizens in water management, rooted in experience with large water management projects. This experience highlights both the need for, and the difficulties involved in, changing the relationship between professionals and Âstakeholders at the level of expectations and behavior. The conclusions suggest new roles for stakeholders in complex technical domains like water management and sketch some features of a new model of practice that engages to the challenge of working under the shadow of uncertainty cast by a changing climate.
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Notes
- 1.
Also here a cost-benefit analysis is applied. One makes sure that really valuable assets are not at risk, of course. So one can accept for instance flooding of the lowest few tens of cm of a couple of houses, and take the damage into account when doing the total (economic) assessment. Social cost-benefit analysis remains an important instrument in the Delta Program.
- 2.
For example, ‘How many victims do you find acceptable?’ is a question that needs an answer before risks can be calculated.
- 3.
Influence in these negotiations is based mainly on reputation (e.g., ‘Our scenarios are based on the IPCC report’ – in turn based, at least partly, on non-hypothetical and non-extrapolated data) and forecasting ‘what-if?’-scenarios that are hardly rock solid science. The value of scenarios is not so much what they say about the future, but the way they articulate the shadows cast by uncertainty and ignorance.
- 4.
See: http://www.compendiumvoordeleefomgeving.nl/indicatoren/nl0229-Zeespiegelstand-Nederland.html?i=9-54. There has been an unchanging upward trend, 1.8  ±  0.2 mm per year, over the past century. The issue is: it is not accelerating (yet), as when would expect under increased greenhouse-gas conditions.
- 5.
For example: How high does the water come? How fast does it get there? If there are people, will there be victims and how many?
- 6.
Doubt is perceived as the experiece of a problematic situation, triggered by a mismatch that is experienced as surprise, between the expected results of action and the results that are actually achieved in practice (Argyris and Schon 1996: 11).
- 7.
The core task of the DPIJ program organization is to investigate the long-term development of the water level management in the IJsselmeer area, mostly related to issues of future fresh water supply and water safety in the context of climate change. The Delta Committee (2008) advised the Dutch government to raise the water level in the IJsselmeer Lake with 1.5 m. Such a decision will have major impacts for the local communities in that area and the natural environment. The high degree of uncertainty inherent to climate change, the multiple issues, and the multi-stakeholder character of this policy program form a challenge for the practitioners involved.
- 8.
Strategic uncertainty refers to the large varieties of strategic choices actors make with respect to complex, wicked problems. Institutional uncertainty is a result of the involvement of many different actors with different institutional backgrounds. These two forms of uncertainty form an intrinsic characteristic of complex policy problems (Kloppenjan and Klijn 2004: 6–7). Such problems also feature high knowledge uncertainty and high stakes (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993).
- 9.
Polder refers to areas of land that are artificial.
- 10.
Howard Raiffa.
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Hogendoorn, D., Laws, D., Lividikou, D., Petersen, A. (2012). Framing Practice in an Uncertain Climate: Adaptation and Water Management in the Netherlands. In: Karl, H., Scarlett, L., Vargas-Moreno, J., Flaxman, M. (eds) Restoring Lands - Coordinating Science, Politics and Action. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2549-2_14
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