WP4 – Overall description
WP4 identifies suitable mitigation, adaptation and compensation measures to address land subsidence as well as governance and legal approaches necessary to allow for sound decision-making and the implementation of measures. ‘Measures’ refers not only to technical measures, but also to economic and financing tools that are being identified in consultation with WP3. These aim at supporting parties to carry the costs of damage and/or implementation of measures. In addition, measures can be social (e.g. awareness campaigns) or legal (e.g. compensation schemes) in nature.
A central tenet of WP4 is that measures to address land subsidence should be context-sensitive. Therefore, measures’ applicability in different contexts – most notably: rural vs. urban areas in the Netherlands –will be thoroughly assessed.
Decision-making about and implementation of measures takes place in an existing, but highly dynamic and governance setting and legal system. Existing governance approaches (e.g. experimentation; responsibilisation; mainstreaming) and legal frameworks (e.g. related to environmental law) are being studied to assess the extent to which they are conducive to effective long-term strategies to address land subsidence. The project will lead to suggestions to improve existing approaches or to shift emphasis between the approaches.
WP4 provides input to the foresight exercises that are being carried out within WP5. These inputs include:
- information about available measures (technical, social, economic, legal) and their pros and cons, for both rural and urban areas;
- information about probable future scenarios based on existing governance settings and legal frameworks;
- ideas as inputs for visions of the future (plausible and less plausible) including characteristics of future governance and legal settings.
