Making Space for the River

Jeroen Frank Warner, Arwin van Buuren, Jurian Edelenbos

• Publisher: IWA Publishing
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781780401126
• eBook ISBN: 9781780401133
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This book examines recent developments in river (flood) management from the viewpoint of Making Space for the River and the resulting challenges for water governance. Different examples from Europe and the United States of America are discussed that aim to 'green' rivers, including increasing river discharge for flood management, enhancing natural and landscape values, promoting local or regional economic development, and urban regeneration. 

Making Space for the River presents not only opportunities and synergies but also risks as it crosses established institutional boundaries and touches on multiple stakeholder interests, which can easily clash. Making Space for the River helps the reader to understand the policy and governance dynamics that lead to these tensions and pays attention to a variety of attempts to organize effective and legitimate governance approaches.  

The book helps to realize connections between policy domains, problem frames, and goals of different actors at different levels that contribute to decisive and legitimate action. Making Space for the River has an international comparative character that sheds light upon both the country-specific governance dilemmas which relate to specific state traditions and institutional characteristics of national water management, but also uncovers interesting similarities which provide us with building blocks to formulate more generic lessons about the governance of Making Space for the River in different institutional and social contexts. 

The authors of this book come from a variety of disciplines including public administration, town and country planning, geography and anthropology, and these different disciplines bring multiple ways of knowing and understanding of Making Space for the River programs. The book combines interdisciplinary scientific analyses of Space for the River projects and programs with practical knowing and lessons-drawing. Making Space for the River is written for both practitioners and scholars and students of environmental policy, spatial planning, land use and water management. 

Editors: Jeroen Warner, Assistant Professor of Disaster Studies, Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Arwin van Buuren, Associate Professor of Public Administration, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Jurian Edelenbos, Professor of Public Administration, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands.  

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Making Space for the River: governance challenges
• Chapter 2: Space for the River: a condensed state of the art
• Chapter 3: Space for the River IJssel: Tortuous quests for striking an acceptable balance between water, nature and development
• Chapter 4: Dealing with uncertainties in the Dutch Room for the River programme: a comparison between the Overdiep polder and Noordwaard
• Chapter 5: CalFed and collaborative watershed management: success despite failure?
• Chapter 6: Integrated water resources management in the United States: The Rogue and Willamette River cases
• Chapter 7: Finding “Space forWater”: crossing concrete policy thresholds in England
• Chapter 8: A tale of two channels for the Thames
• Chapter 9: Land policy for German Rivers: making Space for the Rivers
• Chapter 10: Strong sentiments on the Scheldt: dike displacements in Flanders and the Netherlands
• Chapter 11: Flood-risk and watershed management conflicts in France: Upper catchment management of the river Rhône
• Chapter 12: Integrated and participatory planning to create more Space for the River Danube in Romania
• Chapter 13: Giving Space to the Tisza River in Hungary
• Chapter 14: Space for the River: governance challenges and lessons