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Stockholm Paper Fransmaya Final Draft Civil protection and climate change impacts in the Netherlands: Local risk perceptions and actions Maya M. van den Berg1 Twente Centre for Studies in Technology and Sustainable Development (CSTM), University of Twente, the Netherlands Frans H.J.M. Coenen Twente Centre for Studies in Technology and Sustainable Development (CSTM), University of Twente, the Netherlands This paper is prepared for the international conference ‘Climate Adaptation in the Nordic Countries: Science, Practice, Policy’, Stockholm, Sweden, 8-10 November 2010. 1 Email: [email protected] Abstract Being a delta, one third of the Dutch territory consists of flood-prone areas. This article discusses how the local civil protection system in the Netherlands responds to increasing climate change-induced flooding risks in terms of risk perception and action. Case studies on three Safety Regions are used to better understand the relation between climate change risk and changes in civil protection systems and practices. Data is presented that suggest that a minimum level of climate change risk awareness is present and that proactive action from the civil protection system is exceptional. 2 1 Introduction Although we are unable to mark them as climate change impacts, natural hazards are now increasingly occurring and causing increasing damage (O’Brien, ’Keefe, Rose & Wisner 2006). The Netherlands are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise as 60% of its territory is located below sea level. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) estimates that currently one third of the Dutch economy is at risk from climate change-induced flooding risk as the flood-prone parts of the country accommodate 6 million people and one third of the GNP (CBS 2009). Immediate flooding risk is not at stake, as these flood-prone parts are protected by a sophisticated flooding prevention system that developed over centuries. Yet residual risks remain: In 1953, a combination of severe winds and extremely high tide caused the North Sea Flood by breaching through the flooding defence works in the south-western part of the country resulting in 1,800 fatalities. After the North Sea Flood, the Dutch government implemented measures to prevent sea flooding ‘once and for all’. Based on the population size and economical value of the area, extremely high protection levels were determined for flood-prone regions (up to 1/10,000, meaning that the flood defence works are designed to resist water levels occurring once per 10,000 years). Full trust in the reliability of the flood defence works, however, also laid the foundation for the general feeling of being safe ‘behind our dykes’. Flooding risk became a notion connected to the past. Large-scale residential districts and industries were developed in the flood-prone, low-lying areas in the west of the country. After decades of large investments in sea flooding protection, however, the protection against river flooding was now lagging behind. In addition, new residential areas and hospitals were built on riverbanks, while due to upstream developments (e.g. deforestation) rivers discharge much faster than in the past. The 1990s recorded two events of extreme precipitation hitting the catchment areas of the Meuse and the Rhine Rivers resulting in large- scale flooding in the Netherlands. In 1993, 12,000 people were evacuated from the Meuse valley in the Limburg region, many livestock drowned. Two years later, 25,000 people (and all livestock) were evacuated from parts of the Rivierengebied region that were at direct flooding risk –this is the largest post-war evacuation in the country. After these river floods, politicians decided that the major rivers IJssel, Rhine and Meuse should be given more ‘room’ instead of using the riverbanks as urban development areas. The new approach was implemented in the national programme ‘Room for the River’ that consists of many hydrographical projects on dyke improvement, dyke shifting, lowering of flooding beds and removing obstacles along the rivers. The public was informed on the new vision in the campaign ‘The Netherlands live with Water’ through activities and media attention. In the early 2000s, after Katrina had hit New Orleans, another shift in flood risk perception took place as politicians now realised that our society is also vulnerable and that we could also be struck by such a flooding catastrophe (TMO 2009). Two committees were appointed to improve the flooding preparedness of the Netherlands: The Delta Commission and the Flooding Management Task Force (TMO). TMO’s assignment was to improve the 3 organisational dimension in flooding events, resulting in strategies and scenarios for the most vulnerable areas in the country –climate change threats as such, however, did not appear to be of decisive significance in its emerge. The Delta Commission had to advise the national government on how to become ‘climate proof’ in the century to come. The commission advised to strengthen dykes and embankments tenfold (Delta Commission 2008). The issue of water is indeed high on the policy agenda, as parallel to the Delta Commission’s activities also an update of the Administrative Agreement on Water (NBW- Actueel) was signed by the national, regional and local authorities agreeing that the Dutch water system should jointly be put in order at the lowest possible costs. The update was inspired by the fact that new climate change scenarios were available (VNG 2008). Yet technical solutions to prevent us from future flooding are not so much the problem. Difficulties arise when implementing as the current institutional setting does not allow structural solutions to be implemented; at best they result in incidental solutions (Tol et al 2003). Moreover, climate change does not only include flooding risk induced by sea level rise and increasing river discharges, but ‘poses novel risks often outside the range of experience, such as impacts related to drought [and] heat waves’ (Adger et al. 2007, p. 719). Increasing frequency of peak rains, heat waves and storms are foreseen for the Netherlands (KNMI 2006). These events are already causing substantial damage, and many deaths in case of heat waves; the 2006 heat wave caused 1,000 Dutch heat-related deaths pushing the Netherlands to position four of the world rankings of natural disasters fatalities (EMDAT 2007). Derived impacts from primary climate change impacts, such as drought, have also already caused serious troubles. The potential impacts from climate change on countries therefore can be seen as a national security issue (Barnett 2003). The National Safety Strategy indicates heat/drought to be ‘probable’ and causing ‘considerably to severe impact’; sea flooding is considered to be ‘very unlikely’, but causing ‘catastrophic’ impacts (our translations; Ministry BZK 2008). The civil protection system in the Netherlands is now facing a various set of climate change-related impacts. Impacts from climate change as such might not be completely new, still the frequency and size of extreme weather events are expected to change and this is something to anticipate on. The civil protection system can adapt its practices and methods at the operational level and its policy and strategies at the strategic level. So far, some studies are available on the interface of climate change and disaster management (Barnett 2003; O'Brien, O'Keefe, Rose & Wisner 2006; Thomalla, Downing, Spanger-Siegfried, Han & Rockstrom 2006), but little research applies a policy focus by exploring the role of adaptive capacity of civil protection systems. This paper analyses how the Dutch civil protection system is currently incorporating climate change impacts into their practices and policies. We determine the degree to which the system of civil protection in the Netherlands is currently preparing for climate change by addressing the following research questions: 1) what are the recent institutional changes in the Dutch civil protection system? 2) what are recent changes in civil protection practice and civil protection actor perceptions of climate risks? and 3) to what extend are the recent changes in 4 the civil protection system caused by the perception of climate changes risk, and what were driving factors for these changes? In the following, first we present the method, concepts and data applied in the study (Section 2). We continue with discussing the background of our study (Section 3) and then the findings and results (Section 4). We close the paper by presenting our conclusions (Section 5). 2 Research methodology and data used 2.1 Concepts used in the study Throughout the study, we focus on the concepts of adaptation, adaptive capacity and risk perception when addressing the research questions presented in the previous section. In fact, we investigate to what extend the Dutch civil protection system is adapting to climate change. We employ the concept of civil protection as to describe the public institutions that are concerned with the safety of the Dutch society –in our study we focus on the local and regional level. Adaptation in the climate change literature generally refers to a process, action or outcome in a system in order for the system to better cope with, manage or adjust to some changing condition, stress, hazard or opportunity. Based on their timing, adaptations can be anticipatory or reactive, and depending on their degree of spontaneity they can be autonomous or planned (Smit & Wandel 2006). In the Netherlands, traditional adaptation is reactive, as it has involved dyke enforcements in the flooding aftermath. Sub-national adaptation to climate change is a research theme that has been given increasing interest (Adger & Vincent 2005; Adger, Arnell & Tompkins 2005; Naess et al. 2005; Wall & Marzall 2006; Wilson 2006). Adaptation is intimately associated with the concept of adaptive capacity which reflects the ‘capability of the system to cope, adapt, or recover from the effects of climate change’ (Wall & Marzall 2006). The IPCC defines adaptive capacity as the ‘the ability of a system to adjust to climate change’ (IPCC 2007).
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