Enhancing Water Governance: Identifying and addressing governance gaps in the Blauwe Agenda for the Utrechtse Heuvelrug

Abstract

The Utrechtse Heuvelrug (UH) faces increasing droughts, flooding and competing water uses. The Blauwe Agenda (BA) is a multi-actor governance programme organised into 13 Building Blocks (BBs) to strengthen climate resilience, yet collaboration intensity, benefits alignment, and role clarity differ across the BBs.

This study aims to identify governance gaps (misfits) that limit the BA’s effectiveness and propose targeted bridging measures that improve alignment on actor roles, incentives and capacities to improve BB implementation.

This was done through a mixed-methods case study, combining an Actor–Issue Network with a cost–benefit analysis and a power–interest matrix. Desktop research, semi-structured interviews and a structured survey was used to gather data. The analyses mapped BB interdependencies, collaboration patterns, actors’ perceptions on costs, benefits and relevance and alignment between interest, power and network positions.

Three types of misfits were identified: (1) Collaborative misfits, where despite shared benefits, actors collaborate less than expected on the BBs Strategic Disentanglement, Water retention in high flanks, Optimisation of drinking water abstractions, Surface water for drinking water and Anticipatory water management. Underlying causes include dependency on land/control rights, organisational capacity constraints, differing planning cycles and unclear entry points for peripheral actors. (2) Perceptual misfits, where due to sectoral prioritisation divergent benefit perceptions concentrate on the BBs Strategic disentanglement and Strengthening circular agriculture, weakening shared motivation for action. (3) Role misfits, where responsibilities and expectations are unevenly distributed. Vitens is systematically underrecognised across seven BBs, HDSR is over-estimated on two BBs, and coordination is concentrated around PU, creating a continuity risk. NPUH shows high connectedness but relatively low perceived influence, indicating underused capacity.

Seven bridging measures are proposed as a strategy to addressing the misfits: (1) re-clarify and formalise responsibilities with attention to underrecognised and overestimated actors, (2) appoint NPUH as a municipality connector to provide clear entry points, (3) establish backup project-management capacity beyond PU, (4) address resource constraints (e.g., optimise processes, rotate representation), (5) create an overview of planning cycles, (6) foster dialogue on BBs with divergent benefits and (7) develop targeted benefit communication for central yet undervalued BBs.

The BA has strong foundations, but its full potential is limited by collaboration, perceptual and role misfits. Implementing the proposed measures can improve coordination, role clarity and engagement. Thereby making the BA more adaptive and effective in safeguarding water resources, ecological integrity and human well-being in the UH.