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Adaptation to climate change is a rapidly emerging policy domain. Over the last decade we have witnessed many attempts to enhance the climate robustness of agriculture, urban development, water systems, and nature to an increase in flood and drought risks due to a higher variability in rainfall patterns and sea level rise. In the vulnerable Dutch delta, regional authorities have developed adaptation measures that deal with flood risk, the availability of fresh water, subsidence, and salt water intrusion. In view of all the uncertainties that surround climate change, scientists emphasize that it should be possible to make changes when conditions change or insights evolve. The concept of adaptive governance has been introduced to facilitate the process of climate adaptation. Adaptive governance requires the availability of governance arrangements that facilitate adaptiveness by being flexible to enable adjustment. Although flexible arrangements for adaptation to climate change make sense from an adaptive governance perspective, from a more bureaucratic, political, and legal perspective, there might be good reasons to make arrangements as solid and robust as possible. In this article we answer the question to what extent the arrangements used to implement various adaptation measures are really adaptive and what mechanisms play a role in obstructing the accomplishment of adaptive arrangements. By analyzing and comparing nine adaptation cases, dealing with different climate issues, and the arrangements used to implement them from both a governance and a legal perspective, we are able to get more detailed insight into the main characteristics of the selected arrangements, their degree of adaptiveness, and the main hampering mechanisms for the creation or functioning of adaptive arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both in academic literature and political practice, resilience is becoming a central evaluative concept for assessing climate adaptation policies. This makes sense because society's main challenge in an altering the environment is to adapt to the inevitable changes. However, applying the concept of resilience to devise adaptation strategies reveals that social-ecological resilience acquires different meanings depending on the social context. There is no straightforward application of resilience. In this contribution, it will be argued that giving meaning to the concept of resilience in adaptation strategies requires making normative choices. These choices concern whether there is a public interest in adaptation, the distribution of private and public responsibilities, and striking a balance between individual rights and general interests. Because these normative choices can be questioned and revised, it is important that they are made explicit to enable a democratic debate on the direction that adaptation strategies should take. Simply referring to the concept of resilience in an adaptation strategy does not suffice, but occludes this discussion. Through formulating and applying a condensed scheme of politico-theoretical approaches that underpin diverging adaptation approaches, this contribution reveals the various underlying normative assumptions and explicates the relevant political choices. Three Dutch adaptation strategies serve as empirical examples. They illustrate the importance of the societal context in giving meaning to resilience in the development of adaptation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of water management for the safety of the European Union (EU) citizens during climate change. It states that adaptive water management help protect the aquatic ecosystem and prevent or minimize the damage cause by climate change. It examines the role of the government on the social-ecological resilience of the economy and for the public interest.

The article discusses the development of international law which focuses on addressing land-based pollution in the Mediterranean Sea. It provides an overview of these laws both at the international and European levels, including United Nations (UN) Watercourses Convention and UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, Barcelona Convention and Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). The author asserts that international and European environmental laws should be associated with each and cooperation among courts must be considered to effectively understand their responsibilities in governing the laws.

In 2015, China’s national government initiated a Sponge City Programme to address its urban flood issues. A sponge city is a city built around the concept of managing water in an ecologically sustainable way. The intention is to improve urban resilience through rainwater capture, storage and use. This article applies a four-mode governance framework to analyze the programme. It identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the programme implementation and provides recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the challenges and threats currently facing water management and the exacerbation of uncertainty by climate change, the need for flexible yet robust and legitimate environmental regulation is evident. The European Union took a novel approach toward sustainable water resource management with the passage of the EU Water Framework Directive in 2000. The Directive promotes sustainable water use through long-term protection of available water resources, progressively reduces discharges of hazardous substances in ground and surface waters, and mitigates the effects of floods and droughts. The lofty goal of achieving good status of all waters requires strong adaptive capacity, given the large amounts of uncertainty in water management. Striking the right balance between flexibility in local implementation and robust and enforceable standards is essential to promoting adaptive capacity in water governance, yet achieving these goals simultaneously poses unique difficulty. Applied resilience science reveals a conceptual framework for analyzing the adaptive capacity of governance structures that includes multiple overlapping levels of control or coordination, information flow horizontally and vertically, meaningful public participation, local capacity building, authority to respond to changed circumstances, and robust monitoring, system feedback, and enforcement. Analyzing the Directive through the lens of resilience science, we highlight key elements of modern European water management and their contribution to the resilience of the system and conclude that the potential lack of enforcement and adequate feedback of monitoring results does not promote managing for resilience. However, the scale-appropriate governance aspects of the EU approach promotes adaptive capacity by enabling vertical and horizontal information flow, building local capacity, and delegating control at multiple relevant scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]