Combining safety and nature: A multi-stakeholder perspective on integrated floodplain management

Highlights

• We study the opinions of persons involved with floodplain management strategies.

• Maintenance strategies are often disregarded in the planning and developing process.

• The stakeholders' visions of nature reveal a preference for a dynamic floodplain.

• The floodplain rejuvenation strategy is not congruent with current Dutch policy.

• New collaboration arrangements are desired for integrated floodplain management.

Abstract

In The Netherlands, river management strategies and land use of floodplains have changed drastically over the last two decades. Due to an integrated and participatory planning style, many agricultural fields in floodplains were transformed to nature. The idea of “self-regulating nature” in the floodplains and policies such as Room for the River and WaalWeelde created more multifunctional and natural floodplains. In this way, during the planning phase, win–win situations were created between flood protection and nature. It was only later that obstacles occurred with regard to the maintenance of floodplains, mainly because of different perspectives of the stakeholders on how to reconcile flood protection and nature. Therefore this study focuses on the opinions of persons involved with ‘future’ floodplain management strategies, which have been divided into five themes:

• visions of floodplain management;

• collaborators in floodplain management;

• visions of nature and self-regulating nature;

• realization of Natura 2000 goals in floodplains;

• feasibility of the Cyclic Floodplain Rejuvenation (CFR) strategy.

We interviewed various persons involved in river and nature management along the Waal River.

Based on our findings, it is concluded that an integrated planning approach has not been incorporated into the maintenance strategies and programs and, as a result, new, innovative management strategies such as CFR are proving to be incompatible with ‘static’ regulations such as Natura 2000's conservation goals and flood protection norms. However, by exploring the responders' visions of nature, we found that the majority of them preferred a dynamic vision of floodplains and, for this reason, they have advocated for more flexibility in current policies related to river and nature management. Additionally, the respondents emphasized the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration to realize the goal of cost-efficient floodplain management.

Introduction

River management strategies and land use of floodplains, especially those in industrialized countries, have changed considerably over the last two decades (Jacobs and Buijs, 2011, Pahl-Wostl, 2006, Sparks, 2010). One of the most pronounced changes is related to the increased importance of a sound ecological status for the fluvial system. This focus on nature rehabilitation and the trade-off with flood protection demanded for an integrated planning and management approach. As a result the floodplains were changed to multifunctional riverine landscapes (Pahl-Wostl, 2006, Van Stokkom et al., 2005), which increased complexity regarding management (e.g. Dufour and Piégay, 2009), perceptions (e.g. Jähnig et al., 2011) and institutional arrangements (Wiering and Arts, 2006) of these multifunctional floodplains. In Europe, this is most evident in the Rhine river basin (Havinga and Smits, 2000) and also visible in The Netherlands.

In The Netherlands, the so-called “Plan Stork” (De Bruin et al., 1987) has brought the aims of nature rehabilitation and flood protection closer together. Plan Stork elegantly focused attention on the long-forgotten biodiversity of the floodplains as it has been erased from man's recollection as a result of one-sided agricultural use of the floodplains during the last few centuries.

Based on historical studies and international references to natural (unregulated) river systems, the authors stated that the original fluvial-related biodiversity would return as soon as

• the agricultural land use of the floodplains ended;

• more room was given to natural erosion and sedimentation processes;

• large herbivores were introduced into the floodplains.

This vision of “self-regulating nature” (Stanford et al., 1996, Ward et al., 2001) became a source of information for the Dutch ecological rehabilitation programs of the Rhine branches and Meuse River (Buijs, 2009). In the end, 42 percent of Dutch floodplains will be transformed to a self-regulating nature (Postma et al., 1996) within the context of hampered riverine processes (hampered by regulation), and self-regulating nature reaches the boundary conditions set by flood protection and navigation conditions (Stanford et al., 1996). Also, fueled by such European policy guidelines as the European Water Framework Directive and Natura 2000 (Mostert, 2003), more and more agricultural land in the floodplains was bought by the national government and handed over to nature management organizations (Van Heezik, 2006, Wiering and Van De Bilt, 2006).

During this period (1987–1995), there was close cooperation between three ministries: the (formerly called) Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Fisheries¹; the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning, and the Environment; and the Ministry of Transport, Public Works, and Water Management.² Apart from a spectacular increase in biodiversity along the Dutch rivers, new economic perspectives related to ecotourism also resulted from this land use transformation to more natural and multifunctional floodplains (Kurstjens and Peters, 2012).

Successful cooperation between the three ministries resulted in the transformation of a large area of agricultural land to a self-regulating nature that changed after the floods of 1993 and 1995 (Van Heezik, 2006). Although the declaration of Arles (Anonymous, 1995) — in which Rhine riparian states participated — has increased the international awareness of the important role nature plays in sustainable flood protection, The Netherlands, being the most downstream country, realized that increasing the water discharge capacity was the primary way to maintain the agreed flood protection level.

Based on this awareness, the “Room for the River” program was launched in 2006, and resulted in a comprehensive package of measures intended to increase the water discharge capacity of the Dutch river systems (Anonymous, 2006). Although the main aim was still flood protection, this new planning and policy tried to stimulate so-called win–win situations; i.e. approaches that would generate positive returns in different domains: primarily in the domain of flood protection, but also in the domains of landscape development and economic profit (Smits et al., 2000).

Again, this was an almost revolutionary change and resulted, for instance, in the Waal region (the Waal River is the main branch of the Rhine in The Netherlands), in a multi-player and multi-level process, and in the creation of more multifunctional river landscapes.

The integrated approach was not confined to the level of goal setting (i.e. the idea of combining flood protection, nature, and economics), but was also visible on the level of participant collaboration, which can be observed in other countries as well (Junker et al., 2007). From 2005 onwards, stakeholder participation and bottom-up approaches have been the usual tools with which to involve participants around the Waal River and to include the construction of new coalitions between stakeholders. In this context, in 2006, the WaalWeelde program launched an initiative by the University of Nijmegen (later adopted by the provincial government of Gelderland) to connect public and private entities in order to make Waal area safer, more natural, and economically stronger (Willems, 2009).

This new, integrated, multi-player approach was very successful in early planning and implementation phases around the Waal River (Smits, 2009). It was only later that some obstacles occurred; these were caused by issues regarding the maintenance and management of the newly constructed multifunctional riverine landscapes.

In 2007, more pressure was put on the flood protection goals due to the results of the “Veerman” commission (Deltacommissie, 2008) in which experts urged that the new approach should also be adapted to include climate change. This implied an upgrading of the requirements with regard to protection against river flooding. It was predicted that the Rhine branches, including the Waal River, should be able to cope with 18.000 cubic meters of water per second instead of 16.000 m³/s.

Today, a second obstacle is the national government's decreasing river and nature management budgets. As a result, more efficient management will be needed. Thirdly, for the large-scale riverine ecosystem rehabilitation, the self-regulating nature approach appeared to result in an increase of forested floodplain area (Geerling et al., 2008). The concern arose, especially among water managers, that this riparian vegetation would eventually reduce the water discharge capacity of the river systems. This resulted in the so-called nature-safety dilemma (Vreugdenhil, 2010, Wiering and Van De Bilt, 2006). Apparently, it was very difficult to reconcile the self-regulating nature objectives with the (updated) flood protection goals. The nature-safety dilemma is closely related to the debate on river restoration success. Different perspectives define success or failure of restoration measures (Jähnig et al., 2011). To understand rivers and floodplains, a variety of dimensions are essential to explore (Boon, 1998, Lenders and Knippenberg, 2005), such as temporal dimensions (e.g. historical biodiversity conditions) and social dimensions (e.g. the four representations on the equilibrium of nature (Fig. 2)). So, the question is whether the underlying visions of nature held by the stakeholders involved are as difficult to reconcile as these policy goals are.

The Program Direction Room for the River (PDR), the main board responsible for implementing the Room for the River program, responded with a top-down solution, an approach that strongly contradicted the multi-level and multi-player approaches previously adopted, as for instance in the above-mentioned WaalWeelde program. This new solution was called Stroomlijn (Streamline) (Van Soest, 2008), a name as telling as “Room for the River” was. It called for the flood risk to be reduced to a single, conceivable, and manageable physical problem, solvable by removing vegetation in the floodplains as had been done so successfully before. In fact, as it had been done since the second half of the 19th century when the floodplains were used for agricultural purposes instead of an ecological function (Van Heezik, 2006).

The PDR, however, did not go that far back for their points of reference. They only referred to their reference state in 1997, one that was not far removed in time, but nevertheless, a period before the start of the new Room for the River policy, and before the transition of agricultural use to nature rehabilitation. This reference-based strategy should be replaced by an objective based strategy according to Dufour and Piégay (2009), because dynamic river systems make it impossible to return to a previous state.

The Streamline solution focused only on flood protection using strict norms and inflexible approaches an approach that is clearly at odds with earlier ones such as the WaalWeelde program or Plan Stork. The question then arises as to whether this solution of the PDR will end up dissolving the cooperative coalitions of stakeholders that until recently worked closely together to develop and implement successful, integrated floodplain projects. Because, at the same time (2008), the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality³ had already classified the ‘new’ nature in the floodplains as Natura 2000 — the European network of protected sites — making it impossible to remove this ‘new’ nature.

This Natura 2000 designation by the Ministry was completely at odds with the selected strategy of the PDR, and made it a very complex matter to implement the Streamline project. All the more so because many nature organizations, responsible for daily maintenance, support the approach of the Ministry. This inevitably complicates efforts to combine flood protection and nature objectives in floodplains.

In an attempt to solve this nature-safety dilemma, and also in collaboration with water and nature managers (Peters et al., 2006), a new floodplain management strategy called “Cyclic Floodplain Rejuvenation” (CFR) was launched (Duel et al., 2001, Smits et al., 2000) and later elaborated upon by scientists (Baptist et al., 2004). The core of CFR strategy is to mimic natural erosion and sedimentation processes and so rejuvenate floodplains and riparian forests in regulated river systems.

In natural, unregulated lowland river systems (not found in The Netherlands) regulatory works are absent, leaving riparian forests to gradually “choke” the river during periods of low water discharge conditions. During high water discharges (floods) the river breaks through the natural river banks, demolishing parts of the existing forests and creating new by-passes (Geerling, 2008). These natural events maintain the water discharge capacity of the involved river system and simultaneously locally “rejuvenate” the geomorphological and vegetation succession, resulting in a wide variety of niches and biodiversity.

In The Netherlands, river regulation of the Rhine branches was started during the late 18th century. From that period on the goal was to improve navigation (deep and wide river bed) and flood protection (fast flowing river and low hydraulic resistance of the floodplains) (Van Heezik, 2006). For these reasons, uncontrolled rejuvenation processes of riparian forests can no longer be allowed in densely populated areas such as The Netherlands. However, by mimicking the natural rejuvenation processes through carefully planning, clear cutting, and designing side-channels at certain locations, a (controlled) rejuvenation process can be realized — even along the highly regulated Rhine branches — without reducing the flood protection level. Of course, after such a CFR intervention, the succession of morphology and vegetation will resume so that after a certain period, the controlled rejuvenation process must be repeated, thus giving the floodplain management strategy a cyclic character.

CFR, as a novel management strategy, has been tested at two locations along the Waal River (Fig. 1). Based on these experiments, CFR appears to be a management strategy that could have promising possibilities to combine flood protection and nature rehabilitation goals in floodplains, especially in Natura 2000 target areas.

However, there are different perspectives among the participants on how to reconcile ecological, social and economic objectives with flood protection (Dufour and Piégay, 2009, Jähnig et al., 2011) leading to different opinions about CFR and other possible management strategies. Therefore the objective of this study is to explore the actors' opinions, visions and values, regarding the maintenance of nature and flood protection in floodplains. We have done this by interviewing the various participants involved in river and floodplain management along the Waal River, and by focusing on five themes that frequently emerge in the discussion of floodplain management:

• Visions of floodplain management.

• Participant collaboration in floodplain management.

• Visions of nature and definition of self-regulating nature.

• Realization of Natura 2000 goals in floodplains.

• Feasibility of the Cyclic Floodplain Rejuvenation (CFR) strategy.