Strengths and Weaknesses for Climate Change: Adaptation in Water Governance: A Comparison Across Six European Regions - In: D. Komatina, Integrated River Basin Management for Sustainable Development of Regions

“This chapter comparatively analyses the policy and governance contexts of six European regions that are afected by diferent hydrological impacts of climate change. The results demonstrate that a major governance strength across regions lies in the organization of management capacities to deal with existing water-related risks. For example, the Dutch context focuses on water safety, Cyprus has a clear policy framework to deal with water scarcity and in the Norwegian city of Bergen, wastewater is well managed. As a conse- quence of this focus on present-day risks, climate adaptation governance also focuses on historical risks. New or exacerbated risks posed by climate change remain largely untreated, and responsibilities for dealing with climate-related risks remain unspeciied, as also becomes clear in the German and Spanish cases. A high degree of governmen- tal fragmentation is identiied as another point of weakness. Identiied most clearly in the Portuguese case but recognizable in all regional contexts, diferent subdomains of water management are dealt with under separate policies and are governed by difer- ent responsible agencies. Consequently, information about current performance of the water system is scatered and coordinative eforts, which are key to developing adapta- tion strategies, are hampered.”

(Citaat: Bergsma, E.J., van Alphen, H.J., Bruggeman, A., Giannakis, E., et al. – Strengths and Weaknesses for Climate Change: Adaptation in Water Governance: A Comparison Across Six European Regions – In: Komatina, D. – Integrated River Basin Management for Sustainable Development of Regions – Chapter 12, p. 223-233 – Intech Open, ISBN 978-1-78923-483-1 (2018) – Open Access)