Climate change is making problems with excessive water, drought and heat more likely. Excessive water can lead to flooding and extensive damage. Extreme heat leads to higher mortality. It will therefore be clear that climate change leads to risks in areas such as the economy, health and safety. If we do nothing, the damage may rise to at least € 100 billion between now and 2050 (source: klimaatschadeschatter.nl). The KNMI climate scenarios that were published in 2023 show that weather extremes will increase, as will the consequences. It is therefore of paramount importance for the Netherlands to adapt to these changes. An important way to do this involves planning our urban and rural areas in climate-resilient and water-robust ways. The Delta Programme is working on this challenge under the heading of ‘spatial adaptation’.
Delta Decision and Delta Plan
Spatial adaptation is one of the three themes of the Delta Programme. The ultimate objective and the joint ambitions have been set out in the Delta Decision for Spatial Adaptation. The core of that decision is that the Netherlands will be water-robust and climate-resilient by 2050. The national government has set out the substance of this delta decision and the climate adaptation-related spatial policy in the National Water Programme (NWP), the National Environment Planning Vision (NOVI) and the National Climate Adaptation Strategy (NAS). The implementation of the delta decision is described in the Delta Plan for Spatial Adaptation. It is a step-by-step approach in a cyclical process from risk analysis to measures and emergency response. A new cycle began in 2024 with updates to guidelines, stress tests, risk dialogues and implementation agendas. The organisation of the Delta Programme for Spatial Adaptation will be strengthened by paying more attention in working groups to monitoring, the Risk Dialogue Roadmap, and the structural financing of measures.
Municipal and provincial authorities, water authorities and the national government are working together on climate-resilient and water-robust planning for the Netherlands. Most provincial and municipal authorities are actively working on integrating climate adaptation in their environmental visions. In the preliminary draft of the National Spatial Policy Document, the national government describes the need to anchor spatial decisions in the future-resilient use of the soil and water system. On the basis of the Delta Programme for Spatial Adaptation, 45 working regions (Dutch) are working on transforming those guiding principles into decisions and measures.
Climate-resilient planning
It is difficult to determine the level of climate resilience in planning at present. What is certain is that we are only at the beginning. For climate-resilient planning, we must work on three levels:
- Responding to extreme events
- Physical and technical measures
- Spatial decisions based on the future-resilient use of the water and soil system
The Delta Programme for Spatial Adaptation results in concrete objectives for these three levels, allowing us to also monitor how climate-resilient planning is.