Institutions for Adaptation: The Capacity and Ability of the Dutch Institutional Framework to Adapt to Climate Change

The climate is not the only aspect in this world that is changing. We notice a number of societal trends – a shift towards individual responsibility to receive rain water on private property and to encourage individuals to seek insurance rather than depend on a safety net to be provided by the government; increasing pressure on rural land use because of urbanisation processes, together with development to combine land use functions; decisions to develop large scale housing projects that do not take into account the potential impact of climate change; and, inter alia, the development of innovative solutions such as floating houses and brackish agriculture. We also notice the development of new organizational arrangements, such as multilevel agreements between policy actors, a more horizontal approach to land use planning, and a shift form national to European nature policies. Obviously, the system we will try to study is a moving target, and the theoretical framework we use will have to be able to deal with this