The Vecht river basin stretches across the border of Germany and the Netherlands, making it a transboundary basin, where water management requires coordination between actors in multiple countries. Over the last decade, this basin has faced unprecedented drought conditions. While the region's water demands continue to increase, extremely low precipitation patterns led to critical water shortages in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022, leaving both the regional economy, social and physical well-being of residents, and the natural environment vulnerable (Lukat et al. 2024; Bressers et al. 2016).
Historically, the Vecht region has developed water management centered around flood management; however, as climate change is bringing on more frequent and severe climate extremes, including droughts, the pressure on the water systems is mounting to be resilient and adaptable to uncertainty (Bressers et al. 2016). A resilience approach requires flood and drought management to look across sectors, and develop social, economic, and technical systems that can sustain, improve and innovate its key functions by absorbing, reacting to, recovering from, adapting to or reorganizing in response to chronic stresses, abrupt shocks, and disruptions.
The concept of adaptive governance, developed in the context of environmental and water resource management (Pahl-Wostl, 2009), offers a useful lens to understand the role of learning in these complex, multi-actor systems. Adaptive governance emphasizes flexibility, iterative learning, stakeholder participation, and cross-scale coordination, features that are essential when managing climate-related extremes. Adaptive water governance depends on the capacity of governance actors to learn, reflect, and adjust. The response to extreme events involves a wide range of actors, including emergency responders, water managers, municipalities, safety regions, and policymakers.
These learning processes become even more challenging in transboundary river basins, where actors from different countries must coordinate across diverse legal frameworks, institutional cultures, and political priorities. Post-event evaluations, debriefings, and reflection processes are common mechanisms to capture lessons and support system improvement. While formal cooperation platforms and working groups exist to support cross-border collaboration, it remains unclear to what extent these structures facilitate the shared learning that translates into meaningful and lasting improvements in practice.
Given these challenges, examining how actors in the Vecht basin respond to drought, share knowledge, and adapt their practices across borders is essential to improving the resilience of the basin’s water management systems. Key questions include: How do actors engage with post-drought evaluations and reflection processes? How are lessons shared and implemented across borders? And how does cross-border coordination support or limit learning and adaptation in practice?
We propose a qualitative case study of the transboundary river basin Vecht, including both Dutch and German actors. By focusing on the transboundary context, the study can identify barriers and enablers of adaptive governance and generate insights into improving resilience in cross-border drought management. This research will contribute to the JCAR ATRACE program (https://www.jcar-atrace.eu/), which aims to strengthen transboundary cooperation for flood and drought risk management in the Benelux region. Through the program, results and subsequent recommendations will be shared with the stakeholder community, with the potential to support risk reduction in the region.
References
- Lukat, Evelyn, Pia Mueller, Eva-Lotte Schriewer, Jens Reinert, Elena Klopries, Vasileos Kitsikoudis, Joanne Vinke-de Kruijf, et al. 2024. “Scoping Study of the Vechte, Berkel and Oude IJssel River Basins.” https://www.jcar-atrace.eu/en/knowledge-base?locale=en&segment=3.
- Brockhoff, Romy Carmen, Robbert Biesbroek, and Bregje Van der Bolt. 2022. “Drought Governance in Transition: A Case Study of the Meuse River Basin in the Netherlands.” Water Resources Management 36 (8): 2623–38.
- Pahl-Wostl, Claudia, Marc Craps, Art Dewulf, Erik Mostert, David Tabara, and Tharsi Taillieu. 2007. “Social Learning and Water Resources Management.” Ecology and Society: A Journal of Integrative Science for Resilience and Sustainability 12 (2). https://doi.org/10.5751/es-02037-120205.
- Grainger, Sam, Conor Murphy, and Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano. 2021. “Barriers and Opportunities for Actionable Knowledge Production in Drought Risk Management: Embracing the Frontiers of Co-Production.” Frontiers in Environmental Science 9 (April). https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2021.602128.
- Blauhut, Veit, Michael Stoelzle, Lauri Ahopelto, Manuela I. Brunner, Claudia Teutschbein, Doris E. Wendt, Vytautas Akstinas, et al. 2022. “Lessons from the 2018–2019 European Droughts: A Collective Need for Unifying Drought Risk Management.” Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 22 (6): 2201–17.
- Bressers, Hans, Bressers, and Corinne Larrue, eds. 2016. Governance for Drought Resilience: Land and Water Drought Management in Europe. PDF. 1st ed. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
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