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In de Ruimtelijke Verkenning 2023 heeft het PBL scenario’s ontwikkeld voor de inrichting van Nederland in 2050. In dit hoofdrapport worden vier mogelijke ruimtelijke toekomsten gepresenteerd. Dat zijn: Mondiaal Ondernemend (een toekomstscenario waarin grote bedrijven de lead hebben), Snelle Wereld (de nog verder toegenomen digitalisering doet afstanden verdwijnen), Groen Land (veel ruimte voor de natuur) en Regionaal Geworteld (burgers nemen het initiatief in hun eigen leefomgeving). Voor elk scenario zijn op basis van ruimtelijke modellering en ontwerpend onderzoek gedetailleerde kaarten van het bijbehorende Nederland van 2050 gemaakt. Deze scenariokaarten brengen in beeld welke gevolgen verschillende keuzes hebben.

This Executive summary presents the methodology and main conclusions of the study supporting the Fitness Check of the following Directives: - Directive 2000/60/EC establishing a framework for Community action in the field of water policy; - Directive 2006/118/EC on the protection of groundwater against pollution and deterioration; - Directive 2008/105/EC on environmental quality standards in the field of water policy; and - Directive 2007/60/EC on the assessment and management of flood risks. The study has been delivered by Wood together with Trinomics B.V., Wageningen Environmental Research (WENR) part of Wageningen University & Research, and Deltares. The aim of the report is to present our conclusions on the analysis of the effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, coherence and EU added value of the Directives considered as part of the Fitness Check.

The purpose of this ETC/ICM Technical Report is to support the discussion on the practices of reporting for the preliminary flood risk assessment (PFRA). The focus is on the economic and environmental impacts of flooding. This review only includes a subset of the reported past flood events. By consequence the conclusions are preliminary and the cases presented have to be seen as examples only. The different Member States have gone through a similar process of collating and reporting relevant information. The absence of a common set of criteria is a potential reason for differences. Also the availability, and ease of access to, reliable information may have had an effect. It is important that there is a clear link between the information collected and its utility to help reaching more informed decisions. In order to help achieving an overview of flood impacts at EU level, the main issues to be considered are: revised guidance on the use of the categories of environmental and economic impacts, and revised guidance on the criteria to classify floods as 'significant'. In order to support the use of the PFRA reporting as a basis for a European Flood Impact Database, the main issues to be considered are: the availability of already existing databases, better understanding of how to quantify economic and environmental impacts, and a better understanding of flooding as a probabilistic phenomenon.

"Stakeholder participation is advocated widely, but there is little structured, empirical research into its influence on policy development. We aim to further the insight into the characteristics of participatory policy development by comparing it to expert-based policy development for the same case. We describe the process of problem framing and analysis, as well as the knowledge base used. We apply an uncertainty perspective to reveal differences between the approaches and speculate about possible explanations. We view policy development as a continuous handling of substantive uncertainty and process uncertainty, and investigate how the methods of handling uncertainty of actors influence the policy development. Our findings suggest that the wider frame that was adopted in the participatory approach was the result of a more active handling of process uncertainty. The stakeholders handled institutional uncertainty by broadening the problem frame, and they handled strategic uncertainty by negotiating commitment and by including all important stakeholder criteria in the frame. In the expert-based approach, we observed a more passive handling of uncertainty, apparently to avoid complexity. The experts handled institutional uncertainty by reducing the scope and by anticipating windows of opportunity in other policy arenas. Strategic uncertainty was handled by assuming stakeholders acceptance of noncontroversial measures that balanced benefits and sacrifices. Three other observations are of interest to the scientific debate on participatory policy processes. Firstly, the participatory policy was less adaptive than the expert-based policy. The observed low tolerance for process uncertainty of participants made them opt for a rigorous 'once and for all' settling of the conflict. Secondly, in the participatory approach, actors preferred procedures of traceable knowledge acquisition over controversial topics to handle substantive uncertainty. This excluded the use of expert judgment only, whereas the experts relied on their judgment in the absence of a satisfactory model. Thirdly, our study provides empirical evidence for the frequent claim that stakeholder involvement increases the quality of the knowledge base for a policy development process. Because these findings were obtained in a case that featured good process management and a guiding general policy framework from higher authorities, they may not generalize beyond such conditions."

International audience; The printed edition of the handbook "Learning together to manage together – improving participation in water management" was published in January 2006. Ecologic actively contributed to the development of the handbook, which is one of the main outputs of the European project Harmonising Collaborative Planning (HarmoniCOP). The HarmoniCOP handbook is the result of an extensive participatory working process involving a multidisciplinary team of scientists, government officials, water managers, and stakeholders of different sectors. The methodology featured in the book is based on the concept of "social learning" advocating collaboration between the different stakeholders from the earliest moment possible. The target groups of the handbook broadly includes all actors involved in the practical implementation of the WFD, such as decision-makers, administrators, NGOs, water users etc. The handbook offers practical guidance to the development of participation processes that meet the actual needs of stakeholders and aims to serve as a reference book for the selection of adequate participatory methods. In the context of the handbook, public participation is understood as a continuously ongoing process.