Does individual responsibility increase the adaptive capacity of society? The case of local water management in the Netherlands
Highlights
► Studies the impacts of institutional change on adaptive capacity. ► Uses a ‘hard’ concept (individual responsibility) in a ‘soft’ social science approach. ► Applies a recently introduced analytical framework: the Adaptive Capacity Wheel. ► Identifies challenges of increased individual responsibility for adaptive capacity.
Introduction
Liberal politics has led to the design of the minimal state (Galston, 1982, Nozick, 1974, Wolff and Robert Nozick, 1991), with many activities and responsibilities being increasingly moved from the welfare state in the Keynesian ideal of the post-World War II era to (a) non-state actors, (b) lower government authorities and (c) individuals. These changes are related, included in the shift from government to governance (Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003, Rhodes, 1997).
Neo-liberal politics started off from the 1970s onwards, with a first wave that privatized many state run enterprises – like telecommunication, railways, energy and water. Inspired by neo-liberal economic theories (e.g. that of Adam Smith, see Campbell and Skinner, 1976), private ownership and free competition were seen as necessary ingredients to achieve greater efficiency. A second wave from around the 1990s transferred responsibilities to lower governments through the concepts of decentralization and deconcentration. On the one hand this was a further elaboration of the neo-liberal ideology, following the principle of subsidiarity that directs power to the lowest level of governance unless allocating power to a central unit ensures higher efficiency (Føllesdal, 1998, p. 190). On the other hand, calls for deliberative democracy were increasingly being made, advocating decentralization and political participation in order to deepen democracy (e.g. Cohen, 1989, Dryzeck, 2001). A third, and recent, wave is the shift in responsibility to individuals, i.e. to national residents. Underlying this wave is the classic-liberal ideal of a society in which people are endowed with equal individual autonomy, providing them not only with freedom to act and develop their individual talents (which leads to a maximization of collective benefits, Nozick, 1974), but also making them responsible for (the consequences of) their own actions (Held, 1994, Pojman, 1999, Simmons, 2008). This article will focus on this third and most recent shift, encapsulated in the notion of individual responsibility.
Individual responsibility is increasingly taken up in environmental governance (Gasper, 2007; Scerri, 2009). Especially in the governance of adaptation to climate change the concept gains popularity. Based on the idea that one should be the victim of events beyond one's control, like weather conditions, national governments were for a long time seen as legitimate actors to take responsibility for preventing and compensating the damage caused by weather-related events (Jagers and Stripple, 2003). However, neo-liberal voices increasingly argue that dealing with changing weather conditions should no longer belong solely to the governmental domain; all parties, among who individual households, can influence the impacts of weather conditions by taking their own prevention and adaptation measures and therefore, all parties should take their responsibility to prevent and adapt (Kunreuther, 2006). In this sense, the notion of individual responsibility feeds into discussions on adaptive capacity, i.e. the ability of a system to deal with external changes; the rationale behind asserting individual responsibility in climate change adaptation policies is often one of increasing participation of individuals to enhance the adaptive capacity of society.
Many national-level policy documents on adaptation refer to individual responsibility as an important strategy to cope with the impacts of climate change. For example, the British government states in its 2008 adaptation policy that “[i]ndividuals, businesses, public and third sector organizations all need to take responsibility for how climate change will affect them” (DEFRA, 2008, p. 19), while the Danish government stresses in its National Adaptation Strategy that: “attention must be paid to autonomous adaptation by the individual” (The Danish Government, 2008, p. 7). Developing countries are also examining the role of the individual. In Ethiopia efforts are being made to “increase resilience of [the] individual and community” (Ethiopian Ministry of Environment and Forest, 2005, p. xvi).
The role of the individual is further elaborated on in national and international laws and policies, especially in relation to water management. In the dry Australian provinces of South Australia and New South Wales, the law requires new houses to have individual tanks for rainwater collection and in some parts home owners are obliged to pay for the pipes that will help them use recycled water in toilets (Hurlimann and McKay, 2007). In the Netherlands, by contrast, the law requires land owners to collect and store rain water on their private property, given existing high groundwater levels (NWP, 2009). At international level, the rise in weather index insurances exemplifies the trend towards individual responsibility. These insurances are offered to individuals and households; they pay out in the event of a previously determined extreme weather event irrespective of the actual damage done, to avert the creation of a ‘moral hazard’ – i.e. to prevent a situation in which there are little incentives for individuals to invest in prevention and adaptation measures because funds or insurances compensate their damage (MCII, 2005, The World Bank, 2005).
The emergence of new political ideologies can create tensions. Historically grown social structures (or institutions) are confronted with new, sometimes conflicting elements, challenging the legitimacy of existing institutions (Habermas, 1975). In such a process, responsibilities become a heavily debated topic (Beck, 2000). And indeed, the question which responsibilities for climate change adaptation management can be shifted to individuals, and which should be left to governments, is currently subject to ongoing debate in day-to-day politics (Huber, 2004, Gasper, 2007, Wolf et al., 2010). Key difficulty is that there are no objective criteria for arguing which responsibilities belong to the state and which to other social actors; much depends on the ideological context.
Against this background, this paper aims to link the discussions that emerge from the institutional shift towards individual responsibility in water management to discussions on adaptive capacity in which the ‘autonomous’ and ‘individual’ ability to adapt are often seen as important conditions for increasing the adaptive capacity of society (e.g. Fazey et al., 2007, Smit and Wandel, 2006, Vincent, 2007). The paper argues that institutional change (changes in formal and informal norms, rules, procedures and patterns) can create challenges that can enhance but also hinder the adaptive capacity of society and analyses these challenges. This analysis is based on a framework to study the characteristics of institutions in terms of adaptive capacity, which is applied to three case studies in the Netherlands. The paper addresses the following questions: To what extent and how does the institutional shift towards individual responsibility in Dutch local water management allow for or hinder the adaptive capacity of Dutch society? And how useful is the applied analytical framework to assess the influence of institutional change on adaptive capacity?
Section snippets
The analytical framework: The Adaptive Capacity Wheel
The term adaptive capacity is increasingly used in the literature. It refers to the ability of a system to incorporate or deal with external shocks without impairing its fundamental internal processes or ‘losing its balance’. The concept, first applied to ecological systems (Holling, 1986), is now being applied to social systems. In relation to climate change it has been used to study the extent to which a society is able to adapt to external shocks like climate change (Adger, 2003).
As there
The Dutch policy and legislative context of local water management
In the Netherlands, under influence of neo-liberal politics, responsibilities for local water management are allocated among different social actors. Individuals are responsible for safeguarding their property from water nuisance through water storage on and drainage of their land. Regional water boards manage surface waters and maintain water levels. Municipalities are responsible for managing the public sewer system through which wastewater is transported from privately owned land to the
The case studies
A focus on individual responsibility calls for discussing this issue at local level and, therefore, case studies were performed at local level (see Table 1). The choice of case studies was based on the criteria of municipalities that (a) suffer from water problems and are likely to continue experiencing these problems; (b) had policies to counteract those problems; and (c) that reflected different contexts (i.e. rural and urban, long- and short-term experiences in dealing with water problems).
Analysis: challenges for increasing the adaptive capacity
Our analysis of the case studies using the ACW shows that the recent emphasis on individual responsibility in Dutch water management policies leads to different challenges for increasing the adaptive capacity. This section identifies and discusses these challenges.
Discussion and conclusions
Increasingly, national governments are turning to the concept of individual responsibility in their adaptation strategies. The Dutch government presents individual responsibility as an important element in its effort to increase the adaptive capacity of society. The application of the Adaptive Capacity Wheel (ACW) in this research shows that while the Dutch government is stressing individual responsibility, the interpretation and implementation of the concept in local water management practice
Acknowledgements
This paper is part of ongoing research entitled: ‘IC12: Institutions for Adaptation: The Capacity and Ability of the Dutch Institutional Framework to Adapt to Climate Change’, which is funded by the Netherlands BSIK-Programme Climate changes Spatial Planning (CcSP).5
References (55)
- et al.
Institutions for climate change: a method to assess the inherent characteristics of institutions to enable the adaptive capacity of society
Environmental Science and Policy
(2010) - et al.
Urban Australians using recycled water for domestic non-potable use—an evaluation of the attributes price, saltiness, colour and odour using conjoint analysis
Journal of Environmental Management
(2007) - et al.
Adaptation adaptive capacity and vulnerability
Global Environmental Change
(2006) Uncertainty in adaptive capacity and the importance of scale
Global Environmental Change
(2007)- et al.
Social capital, individual responses to heat waves and climate change adaptation: an empirical study of two UK cities
Global Environmental Change
(2010) - Act on Municipal Water Tasks (Wet GemeentelijkeWatertaken). Bulletin of Acts and Decrees 2007;...
Social aspects of adaptive capacity
Adaptive capacity and community-based natural resource management
Environmental Management
(2005)- et al.
Policy power a conceptual framework between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ policy idioms
Policy Sciences
(2004) Risk society revisited: theory politics and research programmes
Institutions for Climate Change—case study on individual responsibility in adaptive capacity
Living with groundwater—vision on preventing and solving urban groundwater problems
Politics and institutionalism: explaining durability and change
Annual Review of Sociology
Deliberation democratic legitimacy
Urban water management in China
International Journal of Water Resources Development
Adapting to climate change in England—a framework for action
Legitimacy and economy in deliberative democracy
Political Theory
National risk assessment—report on findings
National adaptation programme of action
Adaptive capacity and learning to learn as leverage for social–ecological resilience
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
Five misunderstandings about case-study research
Qualitative Inquiry
Adaptive governance of social–ecological systems
Annual Review of Environment and Resources
Survey article: subsidiarity
The Journal of Political Philosophy
Defending liberalism
The American Political Science Review
Institutional entrepreneurship as embedded agency: an introduction to the special issue
Organization Studies
Goods and persons, reasons and responsibilities
International Journal of Social Economics
Cited by (28)
Fruit stones as green materials for wastewater remediation
2022, Emerging Techniques for Treatment of Toxic Metals from WastewaterLocal farmer's perception and adaptive behavior toward climate change
2021, Journal of Cleaner ProductionEffects of institutional environmental forces on participation in environmental initiatives
2019, Resources, Conservation and RecyclingCitation Excerpt :IN RECOGNIZING THAT HUMAN BEHAVIORS HAVE A SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN AFFECTING the environment, previous studies have attempted to contribute to the current body of knowledge by identifying approaches to effectively engage consumers and motivate a sense of environmental responsibility by encouraging participation in environmental initiatives and recycling campaigns, use of environmental alternatives, etc. (Bergsma, Gupta et al. 2012; Chan and Wong, 2012; Wong et al., 2012; Bohner and Schluter, 2014; Ryoo et al., 2017).
Does co-management facilitate adaptive capacity in times of environmental change? Insights from fisheries in Australia
2018, Marine PolicyCitation Excerpt :This approach was chosen because it enables a specific in-depth examination of adaptive capacity, which is not possible with many of the approaches described in the Mazur review. The ACW consists of multiple dimensions and criteria that have been used to assess institutional adaptive capacity to environmental change in different contexts from Venice, the Netherlands, to Cambodia and Vietnam [32–37]. The ACW suggests that adaptive capacity2 can be assessed in terms of six broad dimensions: diversity, learning capacity, autonomy, leadership, resources, and fair governance.
The institutions-adaptive capacity nexus: Insights from coastal resources co-management in Cambodia and Vietnam
2017, Environmental Science and PolicyEnvironmental communication in the Information Age: Institutional barriers and opportunities in the provision of river data to the general public
2016, Environmental Science and PolicyCitation Excerpt :Staff perceptions about cultural shifts within the institution also suggest that relevant developments on this front do occur. The large variety of frames and actors on different levels as apparent from the interviews is conducive to that process (Mostert et al., 2007; Bergsma et al., 2012). In time, this may allow for double loop social learning, i.e. the inter-departmental reframing of issues and concepts (Pahl-Wostl et al., 2011), and subsequently shared social learning between the institution as a whole and other stakeholders in river management (Tippett et al., 2005; Pahl-Wostl et al., 2007).