Murray Scown
Associate Senior Lecturer
Adaptive Governance of River Deltas Under Accelerating Environmental Change
Author
Summary, in English
Many deltas are increasingly threatened by environmental change, including climate change-induced sea-level rise, land subsidence and reduced sediment delivery. Dealing with these challenges is a pressing necessity because deltas are home to many people and are important centres for economic and agricultural development. Successfully adapting to climate change requires a social-ecological system (SES) perspective, emphasising that social and ecological components of deltas are intertwined. Various modes of governance have been suggested to deal with uncertainty associated with environmental change in SESs, such as adaptive governance. Adaptive governance underlines the need for governance systems to be flexible enough to adapt to variable degrees of uncertainty in SESs. In this paper, we analyse the Dutch Delta Programme (DDP) and the Mekong Delta Plan (MDP) to explore their strengths and limitations relating to nine principles for adaptive governance proposed by DeCaro and others. We evaluate the suitability of this framework for the Rhine and Mekong deltas and contribute to the current understanding of delta governance in light of climate change. Most of the principles outlined by DeCaro and others are present in the DDP and MDP. However, adaptive governance is context dependent. The Rhine and Mekong deltas display different obstacles to adaptive governance, some of which are not sufficiently emphasised in this academic adaptive governance framework.
Department/s
- LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)
Publishing year
2022
Language
English
Pages
30-50
Publication/Series
Utrecht Law Review
Volume
18
Issue
2
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Igitur, Utrecht Publishing and Archiving Services
Topic
- Climate Research
Keywords
- adaptive governance
- climate change
- deltas
- Governance
- social-ecological systems
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1871-515X