Delta Decision on Spatial Adaptation

The Synthesis Document (pdf, 4.4 MB) of the New Urban Developments and Restructuring sub-programme (DPNH) reflects the essence of five years of research, collaboration, and decision-making, aimed at an approach intended to keep the water taskings up to par in the future and to limit the impact of climate change.

A five-year process that has resulted in the Delta Decision on Spatial Adaptation. This is not an end point but rather the beginning of a transition that is commencing now. In the years ahead, we will need to work hard to realise the ambitions set. The Delta Decision on Spatial Adaptation is available on the website of the Delta Programme Commissioner. The Analysis, Ambition and Action steps are explained from page 31 onward.

The collaboration is continued in the new Spatial Adaptation programme. Within this programme, the ambitions and agreements set down in the Delta Decision will be jointly implemented in the years ahead. The implementation will be substantiated through the Spatial Adaptation Incentive Programme, this Knowledge Portal with the Guide to Spatial Adaptation, the approach to vital and vulnerable functions of national importance, and the expansion of the Delta Decision to a National Climate Adaptation Strategy.

Essence of the Delta Decision on Spatial Adaptation

  • The national government, provinces, municipalities, and water authorities will set down the joint ambition to have the Netherlands as climate-proof and water-resilient as possible by 2050, without (re)developments entailing any additional risk of damage or casualties insofar as this is reasonably feasible;
  • By 2020 at the latest, these parties will have incorporated climate-proof and water-resilient planning into their policies and actions, by analysing the water-resilience and climate-proofing of their own planning areas in their regional and local spatial considerations (“Analysis”), translating the results of this analysis into a broadly supported ambition and an adaptation strategy featuring concrete goals (“Ambition”), and embedding this ambition in policy and legislation with a view to its implementation (“Action”);
  • Each of the parties listed will substantiate the joint ambition agreed upon on the basis of its own responsibilities and authority;
  • To this end, the parties have adopted a number of generic points of departure, as outlined in the explanation below;
  • The Water Review will retain its legal embedding as a process instrument, and implementation will take place at an early stage of the spatial planning process;
  • The governments will jointly make available the Guide to Spatial Adaptation and a Spatial Adaptation Incentive Programme as supporting instruments in order to realise the ambition;
  • The national government will ensure that the flood protection of national vital and vulnerable functions will be improved by no later than 2050, setting down policy and regulations to this end in 2020 or as much earlier as possible;
  • In 2017 and beyond, regular evaluations will take place in the context of the Delta Programme regarding the progress of climate-proof and water-resilient planning, and the instruments available to realise the ambition.
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