Programme Description

Climate change is one of the major environmental issues for the coming years, both regionally and globally. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) writes that most of the global warming in the past 50 years is caused by human activities. The Netherlands are expected to face climate change impacts on, amongst others, land and water use and therefore on spatial planning.  

At stake is to look for opportunities for an emission low (re)development of our spatial infrastructure, to enhance land-use opportunities with respect to sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, to increase adaptive capacity in the management of, amongst others, agriculture, natural resources and water, and to enhance the protection of our infrastructure and thus the safety of our people.

Although the co-dependency of spatial planning and climate change has largely been accepted, spatial planners and the climate change community have had mostly isolated (research) agendas so far. A major goal of the programme "Climate changes Spatial Planning" is to enhance joint-learning between those to communities and people in practice within spatial planning. The programme aims to generate internationally competitive scientific results and to provide a knowledge base that interactively supports practitioners on how to cope with climate change. The mission of the programme is to introduce climate change and climate variability as one of the guiding principles for spatial planning in the Netherlands. The programme recognises that the benefits of climate research arise from the application of its findings in land-, water and nature management.