We can distinguish three major strategies for pushing the position of the drought
issue that is still experienced by many as a second-order issue.
(1) Aiming to place drought and water scarcity on the public and political agendas
on their own, as independent problems; for instance, by providing continuous
information to the public, such as in Flanders, on the agency’s website or by
directly addressing national water planners with a broad coalition of stakeholders, such as in the Netherlands’ Delta programme process.
(2) Addressing drought by ‘piggybacking’ other issues, i.e. including
drought-relevant measures in different planning initiatives and ensuring the
coherence of plans with drought objectives.
(3) Preparing a ready-to-implement strategy for when a drought event makes the
topic climb the agenda and receive political attention, resulting in a call for
action.
The careful application of a combination of these strategies leads to the best
positioning of drought issues and aligns them more closely with the already recognized importance of flood risks.
More generally, the issue of drought can be related to the issue of climate
change: better knowledge of the regional effects of climate change on water
availability can be a first step to improving visibility and understanding of the
problem, even if this might be obviously not true everywhere, that it will not be
sufficient as such.
13.4.2 Preparation and Implementation of Water Demand
Management
Most measures involve distributing the available water and decreasing water
scarcity during dry periods to make the areas more resilient by improving their
water buffering capacity. Until now, measures oriented towards water demand have
been less common. However, in the future, they might need to become a more
common part of the drought resilience strategy, even in several areas in water-rich
North-west Europe. This implies a current need for the collection of data on water
rights, the following of water uses, and a review of water prices. Policy measures
and instruments should generate incentives for use reduction that are now often
absent, as water is still regarded as a free commodity rather than as a scarce
resource. Thus, fostering the mainstreaming of drought risk and drought preparedness into private actors’ activities is important.
Collaboration with farmers proved to be very important in most cases in the
DROP project, not only in the two cases in which the pilot project was explicitly
addressing agriculture. Increasing synergies with agriculture, e.g. through farmer
advisory services or the inclusion of farmers unions in the design and implementation of measures, seems to be a prerequisite for successful demand management.
254
C. Larrue et al.
issue that is still experienced by many as a second-order issue.
(1) Aiming to place drought and water scarcity on the public and political agendas
on their own, as independent problems; for instance, by providing continuous
information to the public, such as in Flanders, on the agency’s website or by
directly addressing national water planners with a broad coalition of stakeholders, such as in the Netherlands’ Delta programme process.
(2) Addressing drought by ‘piggybacking’ other issues, i.e. including
drought-relevant measures in different planning initiatives and ensuring the
coherence of plans with drought objectives.
(3) Preparing a ready-to-implement strategy for when a drought event makes the
topic climb the agenda and receive political attention, resulting in a call for
action.
The careful application of a combination of these strategies leads to the best
positioning of drought issues and aligns them more closely with the already recognized importance of flood risks.
More generally, the issue of drought can be related to the issue of climate
change: better knowledge of the regional effects of climate change on water
availability can be a first step to improving visibility and understanding of the
problem, even if this might be obviously not true everywhere, that it will not be
sufficient as such.
13.4.2 Preparation and Implementation of Water Demand
Management
Most measures involve distributing the available water and decreasing water
scarcity during dry periods to make the areas more resilient by improving their
water buffering capacity. Until now, measures oriented towards water demand have
been less common. However, in the future, they might need to become a more
common part of the drought resilience strategy, even in several areas in water-rich
North-west Europe. This implies a current need for the collection of data on water
rights, the following of water uses, and a review of water prices. Policy measures
and instruments should generate incentives for use reduction that are now often
absent, as water is still regarded as a free commodity rather than as a scarce
resource. Thus, fostering the mainstreaming of drought risk and drought preparedness into private actors’ activities is important.
Collaboration with farmers proved to be very important in most cases in the
DROP project, not only in the two cases in which the pilot project was explicitly
addressing agriculture. Increasing synergies with agriculture, e.g. through farmer
advisory services or the inclusion of farmers unions in the design and implementation of measures, seems to be a prerequisite for successful demand management.
254
C. Larrue et al.