Emmy Bergsma

Heterogeneity of experts’ opinion regarding opportunities and challenges of tackling deforestation in the tropics: a Q methodology application

Making the concept of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) ready to be a mechanism to combat tropical deforestation and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by compensating developing countries for income foregone in reducing their rates of deforestation, requires solutions for outstanding controversies. Existing opinions on REDD+ vary greatly. By using the Q-method as part of an action research approach, this paper investigates experts’ attitudes towards REDD+. Based on their responses to 41 statements, four attitudinal groups were identified, characterized as pragmatists, sceptics, conventionalists and optimists. Opinions between groups differed as to the level of application, credibility, eligibility, economic effectiveness, and public acceptability of REDD+ policy instruments. Three of the four groups were supportive of international REDD+ type policy interventions, but there was disagreement on the more concrete design issues of REDD+ projects, such as the allocation of responsibilities, the distribution of burdens and benefits, and whether or not co-benefits could be expected, or should be required. As the potential of REDD+ is shaped not only by international climate policy but also by national and regional policies and stakeholder perceptions, this paper suggests that participatory forms of decision-making may help to develop tailor-made solutions that are supported by the many different actors that are necessarily involved in REDD+ projects.

The adaptive capacity of institutions in the spatial planning, water, agriculture and nature sectors in the Netherlands

The climate change problem calls for a continuously responding society. This raises the question: Do our institutions allow and encourage society to continuously adapt to climate change? This paper uses the Adaptive Capacity Wheel (ACW) to assess the adaptive capacity of formal and informal institutions in four sectors in the Netherlands: spatial planning, water, agriculture and nature. Formal institutions are examined through an assessment of 11 key policy documents and informal institutions are analysed through four case studies covering each sector. Based on these ACW analyses, both sector-specific and more general strengths and weaknesses of the adaptive capacity of institutions in the Netherlands are identified. The paper concludes that the most important challenge for increasing institutional adaptive capacity lies in combining decentralized, participatory approaches with more top-down methods that generate leadership (visions, goals) standards, instruments, resources and monitoring.

A Framework for Analyzing Distributive Decision-Making in Flood Governance

This chapter outlines a framework for analyzing cost and responsibility distributions in flood governance. The framework is based on an environmental politics perspective that draws attention to the role of experts in devising risk management solutions. A key concern that develops from this perspective is that experts—consciously or unconsciously—determine the distributive aspects of risk management solutions without a proper democratic debate on these distributions in the decision-making process. The framework draws on theories of institutional change to grasp the contextual and historical embeddedness of expert-influence in flood governance. It forwards the analytical perspective of framing to empirically analyze the influence of experts on distributions in flood governance.

From Levees to Flood Insurance: The Spatial Turn in US Flood Governance

This chapter focuses on the shift from a “safety” to a “spatial” approach in US flood governance, which took place over the course of the 20th century. It reconstructs the policymaking process underlyig to shift to analyze role and impacts of expert-influence on the distributive decision-making process. Three conclusions are drawn. First, that expert-influence should be understood as the product of the self-organization of expert-groups and political-contextual factors that set boundaries around what expertise was considered relevant in US flood governance. Second, while experts greatly influenced the development of spatial measures in the US, their involvement did not reduce political attention for the distributive implications of spatial policies. On the contrary, they contributed to a better understanding of these distributive implications by specifying the costs involved with spatial measures for different groups in society. Third, with the institutionalization of spatial measures in US flood governance, room was given to a new type of “administrative” experts, who placed emphasis on the operational effectiveness of the US spatial approach to floods. Because of this, past distributive choices were not reconsidered in the light of external developments in the policy field such as climate change.

Policy Developments After Hurricane Katrina: A Case of Overcoming Uncertainty and Value Conflict

This chapter examines the policymaking process after hurricane Katrina severely challenged the spatial governance strategy in US flood governance, embodied in the National Flood Insurance Program. In this process, reforms adopted in 2012 to “repair” the National Flood Insurance Program were partly repealed in 2014 because they produced very high premium increases. This pendulum policy shift raises questions about the extent to which and way in which these distributive impacts of the 2012 policy reforms were recognized and discussed in the political decision-making process. This chapter analyses this question with a focus on the role of experts. The chapter concludes that under the rational-administrative expertise of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a technical understanding of the problem emerged which created support for a policy solution that aimed to repair the financial structure underlying the insurance program. In doing so, attention was drawn away from the distributive impacts of this policy solution on the ground. Rather than explaining these policy developments from expert involvement alone, this chapter concludes that this specific problem understanding evolved through the interactions between experts and political actors in a situated context, in which strategic actions and collective sense-making went hand in hand.

Establishing Safety Institutions in Dutch Flood Governance: A Political Genealogy of the Zuiderzee Works

This chapter analyses the relationship between experts and policymakers in the policymaking process of the Dutch Zuiderzee Works (the construction of the Afsluitdijk and related land reclamations in the former Zuiderzee) that took place from 1888–1932. In this process, key elements of the Dutch safety approach to floods were formed. The aim of this chapter is to showcase the role of experts in the establishment of the safety approach in the Netherlands, to use as ground for comparison in later analyses of the shift to spatial measures in this book. This chapter reconstructs the policymaking process on the Zuiderzee Works to investigate which experts were involved in this process, how these experts influenced the policy discourse on floods through their interaction with policymakers, and how this influenced distributive decision-making in this process. It finds that the interaction between experts and policymakers led to the formulation of a “strong” policy frame on floods. However, rather than toning down the attention for distributive aspects, this policy frame actually invited counter-interpretations and facilitated the recognition of distributive impacts of policy choices.

A Comparative Analysis of Expert-Influence in Dutch and US Flood Governance

This book aimed at improving our understanding of the distributive implications of spatial flood governance measures and of the processes through which distributive decisions in flood governance are made. In these processes, the focus was on the role of experts; in policymaking on flood risk, experts not only specify the costs and benefits involved with different policy alternatives but in doing so also influence policy choices, including their distributive underpinnings. In this book, the role of experts in the shift to spatial measures was analyzed in two cases of Dutch and US flood governance. Based on a comparative analysis of both cases, this chapter concludes that expert-influence in these cases can best be understood as contextually embedded in its larger socio-political context, meaning that close relationships between experts and political actors developed in Dutch and US flood governance through which “strong” policy frames were produced. It calls for the incorporation of spatial-behavioral expertise in the shift to a spatial approach in flood governance to explicate the distributive implications of spatial measures. At the same time, national-level reflection should be ensured to reevaluate the political trade-offs underlying a spatial approach to floods in changing external conditions such as climate change.

Engineering Space: Spatial Flood Risk Management in the Netherlands

The previous chapter concentrated on the formation of the safety approach in Dutch flood governance. This chapter starts out with a brief overview of the institutionalization of this approach over time, to then analyze the gradual shift to spatial measures which has set in since the 1990s. The analysis focuses on three measures with an important spatial component: Room for the River, flood insurance, and the Second Delta Program, which were except for flood insurance implemented in the Netherlands. The chapter reconstructs the policymaking processes underlying these measures. In particular, it looks at the role of experts in these processes and analyses the implications of expert-involvement on the recognition of distributive implications of spatial measures in the decision-making process. The chapter concludes that Dutch policymaking on floods continues to rely on institutionalized engineering expertise, which is ill-equipped to highlight local-level distributive implications brought forward by spatial policies in flood governance.

Adaptation Strategies in the Netherlands

Although climate change has been prominently featured on the global scientific and political agendas since the World Climate Conference in 1979 (WCC 1979), the specific importance of adaptation to climate change has only been underlined about 20 years later. The Netherlands, because it lies largely under sea level, has much to benefit from climate change adaptation. Surprisingly, however, although the Netherlands has been very active in pursuing international climate change politics, the country has not put much effort in politicizing climate change adaptation internationally in this early period and domestically published its National Adaptation Strategy only as late as 2007. This chapter attempts to explain the evolution of Dutch climate change adaptation strategies. It examines adaptation policies in four climate-related sectors (water, nature, agriculture and spatial planning) to identify general patterns regarding adaptation strategies in the Netherlands.