This article provides a comparative analysis of the regulation of ammonia emissions, primarily from livestock installations, in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. It discusses the challenges of regulating agricultural ammonia emissions in view of the rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union (cjeu) on Art. 6(3) of the Habitats Directive. It is argued that the need to ensure certainty concerning the absence of significant effects on Natura 2000 sites is challenged by the uncertainties regarding both the state of individual habitat types and the potential impact of individual projects. A more integrated or programmatic approach may provide an alternative approach to individual assessments, but it is necessary to ensure that additional loads from new or enlarged livestock installations are permitted in areas with high ammonia loads only where it is certain that a programmatic approach will ensure that there are no harmful effects. This might be an almost impossible task.

States can play a key role in adaptation to climate change. Given the transboundary nature of the Baltic Sea, its coastal states have much to gain from cooperation to tackle eutrophication and flood risks. Since eight out of nine coastal states are EU Member States, the EU is expected to steer their efforts. Indeed, EU legislation and the EU adaptation strategy, including one specifically for the Baltic Sea Region are in place to activate state actors. They cover crucial aspects for the management of the Baltic Sea, namely reducing eutrophication and managing flood risks. However, despite the holistic goals – achieving good environmental status and reducing the adverse effects of flooding – these Directives mainly prescribe assessments and the adoption of plans. It is left to the coastal states to design ambitious objectives and take measures or rather rely on exemptions. While all coastal states have strategies in place, progress in the achievement of these goals is not easy to measure. With regard to environmental protection, HELCOM fills this gap by providing additional steering and coordination through more stringent targets for nutrients, which address the impact of climate change on eutrophication. With regard to flood risks, the Council of the Baltic Sea States seems to have started to consider taking a similar role by developing a more concrete and coordinated flood risk strategy for the marine region.

In 2015, China's national government initiated a Sponge City Programme to address its urban flood issues. A sponge city is a city built around the concept of managing water in an ecologically sustainable way. The intention is to improve urban resilience through rainwater capture, storage and use. This article applies a four-mode governance framework to analyze the programme. It identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the programme implementation and provides recommendations.

Adaptation to climate change can be an inclusive and collective, rather than an individual effort. The choice for collective arrangements is tied to a call for solidarity. We distinguish between one-sided (assisting community members in need) and two-sided solidarity (furthering a common interest) and between voluntary and compulsory solidarity. We assess the strength of solidarity as a basis for adaptation measures in six Dutch water management case studies. Traditionally, Dutch water management is characterized by compulsory two-sided solidarity at the water board level. Since the French times, the state is involved through compulsory national solidarity contributions to avoid societal disruption by major floods. In so far as this furthers a common interest, the contributions qualify as two-sided solidarity, but if it is considered assistance to flood-prone areas, they also qualify as one-sided solidarity. Although the Delta Programme explicitly continues on this path, our case studies show that solidarity continues to play an important role in Dutch water management in the process of adapting to a changing climate, but that an undifferentiated call for solidarity will likely result in debates over who should pay what and why. Such discussions can lead to cancellation or postponement of adaptation measures, which are not considered to be in the common interest or result in an increased reliance on local solidarity.

On 15 January 2015 there was a conference organised at the French National Assembly by the Cercle Francais de l'Eau with the inspiring title ‘Water management: should we get inspired by our European neighbors?’ This paper builds on the presentation given by Marleen van Rijswick at that conference in which she discussed shifts in Dutch flood risk policies. The presentation was inspired by research of Dutch academics working in an international team of six EU Member States on the way these countries deal with flood risk management, the STARFLOOD project (see for research results: www.starflood.eu).

Arguably law should change and become adaptive in order to facilitate adaptation to climate change. However, adaptiveness is not the only feature of law. Too much flexibility runs counter to the need for stability, enforceability and legitimacy. Therefore a balance should be struck. Legal experiments could open up the discussion about the need for and the extent of legal adaptation to climate change. This need for experiments motivated our choice to analyze and compare two adaptation measures to deal with water scarcity in a water-rich country like the Netherlands from a resilience perspective. Our aim was to uncover whether the current Dutch legal framework enables adaptation or whether that requires a rule change. We analyzed the applicable legal rules, the legal and policy documents and selected two case studies in an area with structural water scarcity. We interviewed the main stakeholders, which set up adaptation measures. It is clear that the Dutch legal system is not designed to deal with structural water scarcity. Yet the two cases showed that the national rules did not have to change to enable adaptation to a situation of structural water scarcity. Albeit Dutch water resource law does not equally promote all elements of an adaptive approach, it enables adaptation through its polycentric structure and the discretionary room it leaves to regional authorities to create local solutions together with private parties.

Adaptation to climate change is a rapidly emerging policy domain. Over the last decade we have witnessed many attempts to enhance the climate robustness of agriculture, urban development, water systems, and nature to an increase in flood and drought risks due to a higher variability in rainfall patterns and sea level rise. In the vulnerable Dutch delta, regional authorities have developed adaptation measures that deal with flood risk, the availability of fresh water, subsidence, and salt water intrusion. In view of all the uncertainties that surround climate change, scientists emphasize that it should be possible to make changes when conditions change or insights evolve. The concept of adaptive governance has been introduced to facilitate the process of climate adaptation. Adaptive governance requires the availability of governance arrangements that facilitate adaptiveness by being flexible to enable adjustment. Although flexible arrangements for adaptation to climate change make sense from an adaptive governance perspective, from a more bureaucratic, political, and legal perspective, there might be good reasons to make arrangements as solid and robust as possible. In this article we answer the question to what extent the arrangements used to implement various adaptation measures are really adaptive and what mechanisms play a role in obstructing the accomplishment of adaptive arrangements. By analyzing and comparing nine adaptation cases, dealing with different climate issues, and the arrangements used to implement them from both a governance and a legal perspective, we are able to get more detailed insight into the main characteristics of the selected arrangements, their degree of adaptiveness, and the main hampering mechanisms for the creation or functioning of adaptive arrangements.

We compared the governance of flood risk in England and the Netherlands, focusing on the general policies, instruments used and underlying principles. Both physical and political environments are important in explaining how countries evolved towards very different rationales of resilience. Answering questions as 'who decides', 'who should act' and 'who is responsible and liable for flood damage' systematically, results in a quite fundamental difference in what resilience means, and how this affects the governance regime. In the Netherlands, there is nationwide collective regime with a technocracy based on the merit of water expertise, legitimated by a social contract of government being responsible and the general public accepting and supporting this. In England there also is a technocracy, but this is part of a general-political and economic-rational decision-making process, with responsibilities spread over state, insurance companies, individuals and communities. The rationales are connected to specific conceptions of the public interest, leading to specific governance principles. In both countries, flood risk strategies are discussed in the light of climate change effects, but resilience strategies show more persistence, although combined with gradual adaptation of practices on lower scales, than great transformations.

Verschillende rapporten over participatie, zoals van de Commissie Elverding, de Ombudsman en de WRR, bevelen overheden aan de participatie te versterken. Maar wat wordt er eigenlijk bedoeld met participatie? In dit artikel wordt burgerparticipatie benaderd vanuit een empirisch juridisch perspectief. Er worden twee casestudies geanalyseerd in het waterdomein waarin relatief veel aandacht is besteed aan participatie. De casestudies laten zien dat de overheid niet bereid was om macht te delen bij de keuze voor het doel, maar wel bij de uitwerking van de maatregelen, ingegeven door de noodzaak om draagvlak te verwerven. Zij laten zien dat vroegtijdige en uitgebreide participatie overheden winst oplevert in termen van tijd, draagvlak en kwaliteit. Het opnemen van een juridische verplichting tot vroegtijdige participatie in de nieuwe Omgevingswet of in Afdeling 3.4 Awb is het overdenken waard.