Adaptation to climate change induced flooding in Dutch municipalities

This chapter provides a local perspective to adaptation strategies by investigating the effect of institutional capacity on local initiatives within a multi-government context. It focuses on the first research question: what is the current and projected role for local-level government within a multi-level governance model for climate adaptation? Climate change also involves an increase of climatic disasters and extreme weather events. Climate change mitigation is one of the motivations for the joint mitigation project, but adaptation has no separate role. Local-level preparedness for climate change impacts in the Netherlands is influenced by many internal and external factors. The chapter also focuses on the local-level civil preparedness more thoroughly by describing the role for local government within a multilevel governance model for climate adaptation. It addresses the second principal research question: how far does institutional capacity influence the possibilities and limitations for developing local adaptation strategies, and how can this capacity be expanded?