Local implementation of climate policy in the Netherlands: facing the challenges of mitigation and adaption

Ever since the Kyoto protocol became effective (1997), national governments have been delegating climate policies to local governments. In the Netherlands, national climate policy has been effective since 1999 while targeting at a multi-governmental approach. In 2010, a survey found that local climate policies have been adopted by the vast majority of local governments throughout the country. Therefore, obviously, the national government claims that their local climate policy diffusion programs have been successful. This is, however, not the case. Whereas climate mitigation strategies have indeed been adopted widely (Hoppe and Coenen, 2011), this cannot be said for the adoption of adaptation strategies as this varies strongly across the country (Van den Berg and Coenen, 2012). Moreover, the intensity of the implementation of local climate policy varies strongly. In practice, local authorities often lack expertise and neglect local stakeholders in the formulation of climate policy goals, which leads to unrealistic goal-setting (Hoppe, 2013; Van Bueren and Steenhuisen, 2013). This paper analyses the development and current status of local climate policy practices in the Netherlands, and addresses both the mitigation and adaptation lines. Additionally, attention is paid to coupling these two strategies.