Between adaptability and the urge to control: making long-term water policies in the Netherlands

Triggered by recent flood catastrophes and increasing concerns about climate change, scientists as well as policy makers increasingly call for making long-term water policies to enable a transformation towards flood resilience. A key question is how to make these long-term policies adaptive so that they are able to deal with uncertainties and changing circumstances. The paper proposes three conditions for making long-term water policies adaptive, which are then used to evaluate a new Dutch water policy approach called ‘Adaptive Delta Management’. Analysing this national policy approach and its translation to the Rotterdam region reveals that Dutch policymakers are torn between adaptability and the urge to control. Reflecting on this dilemma, the paper suggests a stronger focus on monitoring and learning to strengthen the adaptability of long-term water policies. Moreover, increasing the adaptive capacity of society also requires a stronger engagement with local stakeholders including citizens and businesses

Decentralized Implementation of Flood Resilience Measures – A Blessing or a Curse? Lessons from the Thames Estuary 2100 Plan and the Royal Docks Regeneration

This article presents a case study on the implementation of the Thames Estuary 2100 Plan in the Royal Docks, a regeneration project in the East of London. On paper, the Thames Estuary 2100 Plan advances the shift from traditional flood control to flood resilience, because of its long-term horizon, estuary-wide approach, and emphasis on floodplain management. In practice, however, we identify three frictions between vision and reality: a lack of local ownership of the plan, a lack of clear guidance for floodplain management, and limited capacities with local authority. These frictions suggest an ongoing ‘public-public divide’ in decentralized governance

Resilience unpacked – framing of ‘uncertainty’ and ‘adaptability’ in long-term flood risk management strategies for London and Rotterdam

Resilience is held as a promising concept to produce a paradigm shift from traditional flood control to an integration of flood risk management and spatial planning. Central ideas to the resilience narrative are that ‘nothing is certain except uncertainty itself’ and ‘adaptability’ is key to ‘governing the unknown’. However, this terminology is far from clear, yet increasingly used, which raises the question how it is made sense of in practice. To answer this question, we examine two long-term flood risk management strategies in the London and Rotterdam region with a policy framing perspective (i.e. the English Thames Estuary 2100 Plan and the Dutch Delta Programme). In both strategies, uncertainties are a key concern, leading to adaptive strategic plans. Reconstructing the framing processes shows that the English adopted a ‘scientific pragmatism’ frame and the Dutch a ‘joint fact-finding’ frame. While this led to different governance approaches, there are also striking parallels. Both cases use established methods such as scenario planning and monitoring to ‘manage’ uncertainties. Similarly to previous turns in flood risk management, the resilience narrative seems to be accommodated in a technical-rational way, resulting in policy strategies that are maintaining the status quo rather than bringing about a paradigm shift

Dopaminergic Impact on Cortical Excitability in Humans

Dopamine is a major neuromodulatory agent of the central nervous system. The neurotransmitter has a non-linear dose-dependent effect on cortical excitability and activity, which depends on spontaneous activity, dopamine concentration, and dopaminergic sub-receptors, amongst others. By its impact on cortical and subcortical network activity and excitability, dopamine modulates such cognitive performance as attention, as well as learning and memory formation. Although animal studies have enhanced our knowledge about the physiology of dopamine considerably, the transferability of the results to conscious humans is limited due to altered spontaneous neuronal activity in anesthetized animals or slice experiments. Recently emerged non-invasive brain stimulation techniques enable the exploration of cortical excitability in humans. Here we review the respective experimental results and derive conclusions about how dopamine might affect the cortical excitability of the human brain