Especially in underprivileged neighbourhoods (UNs), with high renovation urgency and thus opportunities to kick-start the energy transition (ET), residents tend to resist retrofit measures. This is due to general lack of trust in government, housing corporations, and other key players. We contend that a negative spiral of ET effectiveness and justice is rooted in two mismatches, between (i) UN resident needs and everyday practices and customary ET solutions and between (ii) UN residents and the key players running the ET. This may produce a downward spiral of ineffective solutions, declining trust and inequalities. We argue that fundamentally addressing these mismatches may reverse this downward spiral into an upward one, and then present our Just PREPARE approach to that challenge. At the core of this approach are (i) ‘double-eyed’ methods to help articulate residents' needs and practices in their own context, which then inform the design of the technological and governance aspects of solutions and (ii) participatory settings and processes for planning the ET. We elaborate this approach and present some illustrative preliminary experiences from a transdisciplinary research project in which we implemented it in four UNs in the Netherlands. We end with some recommendations for future research.

This article presents a comparative account of the evolution of flood governance in the Dutch (Western Scheldt) and Flemish (Sea Scheldt) regions of the Scheldt estuary through the lens of evolutionary governance theory. Evolutionary governance theory is based on three assumptions: governance is continuously evolving, change is contingent, and discourses are drivers of change. Employing a comparative research design and secondary data analysis, this study examines how institutional, material, and discursive factors, goals, path dependencies, and interdependencies have shaped flood risk governance and influenced the integration of nature conservation goals alongside traditional flood safety objectives. While dike reinforcement prioritizes flood safety, integrated strategies—such as transitional polders and dike setbacks—aim to balance flood protection with ecological restoration. This is particularly pertinent in the Scheldt estuary, where ecological degradation has raised concerns regarding the long‐term loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. A significant challenge in transforming the governance of the estuary is anticipating long‐term risks while pursuing ecological and flood safety objectives. Through a longitudinal cross‐case comparison, this study identifies barriers to the adoption of nature‐based solutions in flood risk management. The findings emphasize the need for a more integrated approach that aligns flood safety and nature conservation development policies for resilient and long‐term climate solutions.

Urbanization is accelerating globally, as are the frequency and severity of climate-related disasters. Such phenomena are especially notable in Southeast Asia, where urban floods are often most severe for people living in low-income and irregular settlements located close to rivers or coastlines. The interplay between the overlapping dynamics of flooding and marginalization of "slum" settlements represents a critical research challenge. This study offers deeper insights into how water-related problems intersect with urban spaces of exclusion and exposure, empirically illuminating connections between environmental challenges and spatial inequalities. By zooming in on the city of Pontianak, Indonesia, this article examines dynamic interactions between socio-material assemblages of flooding and urban settlements. We develop a qualitative case study based on interviews with governance actors and residents of riverfront neighborhoods to argue that the processes of territorializing floods and slums as objects of concern are mutually influential and co-constitutive. As a result, ambiguous urban spaces emerge relationally through the territorializing, deterritorializing, and reterritorializing practices of a range of actors, who engage strategically with their boundaries to different ends. The paper contributes to operationalization of theoretical concepts from assemblage theory and sheds light on the political, dynamic, and contested entanglement of two important urban problems.

Answers to ‘what energy is for’ might differ between professionals and residents living in lower-income neighborhoods. By combining ethnographic interviews and creative methods, we engage with residents to analyze justice claims in relation to places for keeping warm and cool in and around the home. Justice claims are normative answers to questions concerning justice. For instance, answers to questions such as: which and whose places for keeping warm and cool should (not) exist, and whose energy consumption should (not) reduce. We highlight three ways in which residents' justice claims emerge from places for keeping warm and cool. First, we discuss how places are perceived, conceived and lived in diverse ways. For residents, place does not only concern the size of the home and its location, but also e.g., the layout of the home, implicated objects, the diverse (human) bodies involved, the sensorial and lived experience. Different justice claims emerge from diverse configurations of places for keeping warm and cool. Second, the temporal dynamics of places for keeping warm and cool connect to justice claims. Instead of focusing on heating and cooling static rooms or houses, we propose a focus on heating and cooling dynamic places. Lastly, residents adjust places in and around their rented home. Meanwhile, an empty standardized home is easier to renovate but contrasts with reality. This tension leads to emerging justice claims. Current renovation standards diminish possibilities for tenants to adjust places for keeping warm and cool. Failing to take residents' situated justice claims seriously, risks misrecognition.

Flood risks can stem from various causes and exhibit distinct characteristics that shape the way they are governed. Depending on flood risk characteristics, specific policies are designed and organisations are involved. In Indonesia, like in other regions, organisational divisions are made for coastal floods, fluvial floods and pluvial floods (resulting from tides, rivers and rain, respectively). The Indonesian cities of Manado and Pontianak both face recurring floods. However, the characteristics of and responses to these floods are different, with consequences for distributive, procedural as well as recognition justice in those cities. In line with Fraser, we define recognition justice in relation to three forms of misrecognition: cultural domination, disrespect, and non-recognition, with examples from Manado and Pontianak. We show that the misrecognition of certain types of floods overlaps and interacts with the non-recognition of low-income informal settlements, disrespect and stereotyping of residents of these areas, and a lack of attentiveness to the culture, livelihoods and practices of people who live alongside rivers. In this way, we examine the landscape of recognition justice in the event of flooding in an urban context, drawing on qualitative interview data gathered from the cities of Manado and Pontianak. The following questions are considered: Who experiences misrecognition? By whom is this misrecognition perpetrated? At which level (institutional frameworks or laws, implementation or social practices) and what are the resulting consequences of this misrecognition? Finally, we explore the interactions between different forms of misrecognition, which create a foundation for further distributional and procedural injustices.

The circular economy is a viable alternative for our current economy; while scholarly work and policy documents problematise current principles and practices, the desirable changes are often treated as fitting in natural transition pathways. Until now, the circular economy has failed to realise its transformative potential, in practice representing at best a matter of laboriously weighing different and seemingly opposite sets of values. What are the building blocks in terms of value creation and retention, and how to upscale new value-balancing practices to a system level? This contribution problematises the concept of value in a fragmented circular transition landscape by drawing on narrative-based and transdisciplinary approaches, and their potential consequences for governing the circular economy.

Nutrient pollution of freshwaters from agriculture is a key barrier to achieving the water quality goals of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). Governance research suggests that governance structures can support the planning of water quality measures. However, it is widely unclear how specific governance structures affect the actual nature of practical measures taken for addressing the “wicked problem” of diffuse nutrient pollution. This study analyses how the extent of consensual policy styles, organizational and program integration, participatory governance, and the capacities of public authorities are related to the substance of practical measures taken (effect-vs. source-based measures) and the choice of policy instruments (e.g., sermons, carrots, sticks). Based on a comparative case study design including six country cases, document analyses, and expert interviews, we find no clear-cut relationships between the country's governance structures and the types of measures chosen or any trend of a combined effect. This suggests that, in the case of the WFD, governance structures are less important than expected or that different governance structures compensate for the effects on the level of practical measures taken and policy instruments chosen. These results question the dominant assumption that these governance structures matter (a lot) in wicked problem solving and may hint to additional context factors these governance structures are embedded in.

Societies are faced with aggravating environmental challenge. To respond to these challenges with desired institutional changes, we need to understand the processes of institutional stability and change. This paper adds to the literature on institutional dynamics by focusing particularly on the various roles of discourses. It examines the interaction of emerging discourses and pre-existing governance arrangements and their outcomes; not by zooming in on a specific policy concept but by scrutinising the long-term development of a policy domain, namely flood risk governance (FRG) in the Netherlands. Based on an abductive analysis, we created a typology that shows the influence of emerging discourses on stability or change of pre-existing governance arrangements. At the one end of the ideal-typical continuum, the pre-existing arrangement remains relatively unchanged or is even strengthened. At the other end of the continuum, little remains of the pre-existing arrangement, i.e. emerging discourses are institutionalised, substituting existing institutions with new rules or organisations. Between these two extremes, several hybrid types can be identified (e.g. absorbing, merging, layering, weakening). Although there is clear evidence of incremental changes and adjustments in the Dutch FRG, fundamental changes are missing due to the path dependency of the strong hydro-engineering governance arrangement.

More open European Union policies, such as the Water Framework Directive (WFD), are often shaped on the go. ‘Bottom-up’ feedback from the implementing agencies plays an important role. How this feedback influences ongoing policies is here conceptualized as ‘reloading’. The case for the reuse of water is presented. International coalition-building proved to be important in agencies’ strategic behaviour: a clear dichotomy between Northern and Southern member states is distinguished. The receptiveness of the European Commission, the openness of the European Union policies, and societal and political attention to the issue of reuse all explain the changes in water reuse policy.

Since 2013, romantic Rhine cruises gained immense popularity in Europe. However, these tourism activities also involve the generation of large amounts of waste. As rivers contribute significantly to the plastic waste influx in the marine environment, it is essential that river cruise companies cope with plastics in an environmentally-safe way. In this contribution, we try to overcome knowledge gaps regarding both the plastic practices of river cruise companies and the policies on cruise tourism and environmental pollution. We adopt a multiple-case study approach and use the Social Practice Theory to analyse the companies' practices and challenges. Furthermore, we combine this with the analytical approaches of the Policy Arrangements and Synoptic Governance to explore the policies for environmental protection and tourism. The results show that, overall, river cruise companies have an eco-friendly approach to plastic waste management. However, dealing with plastics in the freshwater environment is not sufficiently rooted in the above policies: river cruise companies face important omissions in policies and facilities, resulting in plastic emissions in the river. Following the results, we formulate recommendations to support sustainable waste management routines onboard and to improve waste reception facilities onshore to protect the aquatic environment.

Realising the goals of the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive is difficult. The differentiation of water policies according to local conditions enjoys increasing attention and may be necessary to achieve good ecological status in all European waters. This paper seeks to explore to what extent and how local water quality determines the degree of coercion, i.e. the extent to which differentiated policies are voluntary or rather imposed upon policy addressees, of spatially differentiated water policies. It does so on the basis of seven cases in five EU Member States. For highly polluted waters, spatially differentiated policies tend either to make the use of authoritative policy instruments, i.e. coercion by way of formal regulation, or to rely on the threat to introduce such regulation. For preventing the deterioration of relatively ‘clean’ waters, voluntary instruments based on information and persuasion dominate, often supported by subsidies and/or the direct input of public resources. In relation to the spatial differentiation of water policies, issues of data demand, equality and legitimacy have to be taken into account.

Our contribution is exploring the question of the convergence of styles of administrative agents while implementing EU policies. There is work done on national administrative traditions and policy styles more generally, and there undoubtedly are patterns of organizing and doing things at the level of practical implementation of agencies (the European ‘street level bureaucrat’), but can we speak of specific styles of implementation? And have processes of European integration and Europeanization resulted in more similar (European) administrative styles in the member states? Actually, there is shockingly little empirical research on convergence of administrative implementation styles. Therefore, we took a more explorative approach, with the expectation that EU policies over the years have indeed influenced styles, scrutinizing empirical research about four policy fields: packaging waste, labour inspectorates, water management and nature protection. We describe processes of formalization, the changing responsibility and role of the state (and impact on centralization or decentralization), forms of pluralization and stakeholder involvement, and we conclude on patterns and trends we saw with regard to uniformity of institutional structures and styles.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is typically a framework directive that tries to encourage integration of policies for water quality and agriculture. Nutrients (nitrates, phosphates) from agricultural sources remain a ‘wicked problem’ in realizing the aims of the WFD, partly because the directive has to rely on other, neighboring policies to tackle to problem pressure of nutrients; it seems to lack instruments and measures to directly intervene in relevant agricultural policies. This contribution describes the different governance approaches of five member states and regions (The Netherlands, Flanders in Belgium, Lower Saxony- in Germany, Denmark and Ireland) to the nutrients problem and specifically focuses on the relationship between the nature of governance and the nature of measures taken. On the one hand, countries can vary in terms of a more consensual or antagonistic approach to dealing with water quality and diffuse pollution by agriculture, and emphasize more integration or separation in organization and programs. On the other hand, they can vary in the ‘outcomes’ in terms of more source-based measures or effect-based measures and the emphasis in policy instruments used. This article is based on the screening of policy documents, 44 interviews and several (international) feedback workshops. We found a great variety in governance approaches, while the nature of measures, in terms of source-based and effect-based, is only slightly different. On closer inspection, there are interesting differences in the consensual or antagonist discourses and differences in the use of more mandatory instruments or area-based policies. In many countries, the major challenge is to strike a balance between taking source-based measures, where necessary, and accommodating the difficult situations farmers very often find themselves in, as the reduction of nutrients (as a source-based measure) use can lead to lower yields and higher costs for manure disposal.

This chapter discusses the governance of flood risks in a specific case, the Netherlands, by way of explaining the core normative principles that rule the Dutch. To be able to understand the Dutch approach it is important to sketch briefly the historical role of floods and flood management in the country. The chapter first discusses different principles and characteristics of Dutch flood-risk governance. It begins with the concept of public interest and water management: the strong idea of flood safety as a unitary, collective public interest leads to a call for national solidarity. This solidarity principle is very strong, but also has some limitations, both for those that fall out of the system and for international solidarity and cross-border governance. As a consequence, (internal) solidarity strengthens the national public infrastructure for flood risks, reinforcing certain national flood-risk strategies, which influence the third principle: the principle of resilience.

Progress has been made on improving Europe’s water quality. Nevertheless, there is much scepticism as to whether the goals of the European Water Framework Directive will be realised by 2027. Addressing diffuse agricultural sources of pollution remains a persistent problem. The Special Issue “Water Quality and Agricultural Diffuse Pollution in Light of the EU Water Framework Directive” aims to advance the understanding of the different governance arrangements European Member States developed to address this problem. The contributions in this Special Issue focus on governance arrangements in Denmark, England, Flanders/Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Poland, The Netherlands, Norway and Scotland. The contributions address three themes. First, the contributions signal serious concerns with policy integration across policy domains. Second, it appears to be tough to prioritise source-based measures over effect-based measures of all sorts despite the principles embedded in the Directive. Third, scientific knowledge is an important ally for water interests, yet politicisation in power struggles looms. The contributions in the Special Issue offer reflections on the open, participatory, experimentalist governance that the WFD exemplifies. While most authors agree that this path is attractive and appropriate in some respects, questions can be raised as to whether it also avoids confrontations and hampers the effectiveness of policies.

In order to provide a common ground for the Special Issue 'Water quality and agricultural diffuse pollution in light of the EU Water Framework Directive,' this review sets out to provide a concise overview of the academic literature on two topics. First, we review the issues in the governance literature on the 'wicked problem' of diffuse agricultural sources focussing on three principles: (1) fragmentation and the distribution of power to address diffuse sources, (2) the problem of source-oriented and effect-oriented measures, and (3) contested knowledge for policies for diffuse sources. Second, we briefly sketch the literature on policy instruments and confront that with the scholarly understanding of addressing diffuse agricultural sources under the Water Framework Directive (WFD).

European water governance is characterised by processes of interplay and interaction. Member states present and discuss their preferences and expertise in the EU policy arena and implement EU policies at the domestic level. These processes of 'uploading' and 'downloading' are regularly studied. However, a knowledge gap exists concerning the 'reloading' of implementation experiences, i.e. the renewed uploading of information on how policies actually work domestically and how possible implementation problems are solved. Certain characteristics of EU policies are expected to affect processes of reloading. In this paper we study how adaptation pressures and the levels of policy discretion affect the reloading of implementation experiences. We empirically assess reloading processes in the EU Water Framework Directive and the EU Floods Directive. It was expected that a low level of policy discretion leads to clear reloading incentives, in order to either change the policy (if fit is low and adaptation pressure is high) or maintain stability (if fit is high and adaptation pressure is low). A high degree of policy discretion, on the other hand, leads to no incentive at all for reloading. The relatively specific Water Framework Directive indeed shows cases of reloading in which implementing agents discuss their rather technical implementation experiences in order to adjust policy or to maintain the status quo in line with their interests. However, it is notable that reloading also takes place in the relatively discretionary policy process of the Floods Directive. Reloading in this case is driven by social learning, and is triggered by the idealistic aim of improving flood risk management practices instead of changing or maintaining the policy on the basis of self-interest. The paper concludes that policy discretion and adaptation pressure do influence reloading processes, but that other factors also must be taken into account.

This century has witnessed a substantial growth of local, cooperative energy provision, fuelled by public and political ambitions towards energy transition. Such ‘grassroots’ energy provision now presents a serious route to energy production, distribution and consumption alongside conventional, centralised provision. However, worldwide, scaling of cooperative activities poses a challenge. In the Netherlands, cooperatives meet this challenge by forging alliances with mainstream energy companies (162 alliances in 2016). Employing a mixed institutionalist perspective, this study probes the drivers and motives for the rise of alliances, and the way it modifies the energy value chain. The principal results show that, while cooperatives are keen to hold on to their ‘grassroots’ values, they find their development thwarted by internal deficits (lack of finance, marketing, and professionalisation) and external conditions (legal constraints) driving them in the hands of commercial partners. The latter, in turn, use alliances to include more societal and environmental values and connect to bottom-up energy transition initiatives. Interestingly, we observe the rise of a new hybrid form of energy company combing commercial and cooperative drivers and mechanisms. While, accordingly, the current dynamic energy landscape gives rise to a variety of hybrid forms, with key players moving towards each other, the question remains open how energy provision will change.