The role of Hoogheemraadschap de Stichtse Rijnlanden in urban climate adaptation

Abstract

To keep urban areas in the Netherlands inhabitable in the changing climate where extreme rainfall, drought, and heat occur increasingly often, they need to become more climate adaptive. The Deltaprogramma Ruimtelijke Adaptatie (DPRA) requires safety regions to carry out a climate stress test for locations that are at risk of water nuisance, drought, heat stress and flood risk. Based on this test municipalities can create a local adaptation strategy (LAS). Because climate adaptation is such an important and broad topic, different government levels need to collaborate to reach the desired results. Currently, there is no scientific framework on how the relevant government levels: water authorities, provinces and municipalities should collaborate to reach the climate adaptation goals. This research has focussed mostly on the collaboration between municipalities and water authorities. In depth research on the collaboration of Hoogheemraadschap de Stichtse Rijnlanden (HDSR) and fourteen municipalities within its management area has been conducted with the aim to provide HDSR with a set of actions they can take to assist municipalities in the creation of climate adaptation policy and the implementation of adaptation measures. In order to find this set of actions firstly the available climate adaptation policy of the municipalities was reviewed. Based on those results municipal representatives were interviewed to ask about their policy, difficulties, and what they desire and expect from HDSR. Secondly, possible actions HDSR could take were investigated. This concerned policy, capacity and budgetary aspects. Those possible actions were then linked to the main obstacles mentioned by the municipalities to come to a recommended course of action for HDSR. From the policy review, it became apparent that only eight of the fourteen municipalities have a clear climate adaptation policy document and for the other six municipalities it is either absent or fragmented over other documents. The most prevalent obstacles that were mentioned in the interviews were capacity, budget, space availability, citizen participation, and uncertainty of requirements. HDSR can assist municipalities through three different categories: policy, capacity and budget. For the policy category, HDSR can include climate rules in the new waterschapsverordening, which makes standards regarding water nuisance and drought enforceable. The second category, capacity, entails both manpower and knowledge provision. For the last category, budget, HDSR has the option to increase the budget of the impulse arrangement and the amount of subsidies available to citizens for climate adaptive measures.