To implement or continue water management strategies social support is needed. Social support highly depends on people's perspectives on water. However, these perspectives are not static and may change over time leading to changes in social support for strategies. Therefore, sustainable water management strategies should be robust. Robust strategies are able to cope with changing social and environmental developments. Lacking robustness runs the risk of losing social support, which may force policymakers into sudden or expensive measures. We use the Perspectives Method to analyze the present Dutch policy perspective and the dominant perspective on water among Dutch water professionals, by respectively studying the Dutch Delta report and questionnaire outputs and distinguishing between Hierarchical, Egalitarian, Individualistic and Fatalistic perspectives. A comparison between the policy and professional perspective shows similarities and differences. Topics regarding drought, water supply, and waters’ relation to spatial planning need serious reconsideration to guarantee enough present and future social support to implement the measures suggested in the policy report.@en

Het bestaan van verschillende manieren om water te beheren leidt al snel tot controverses tussen wetenschap en beleid. Voorkeuren voor specifieke oplossingen vloeien veelal voort uit verschil in percepties (perspectieven) en niet zozeer uit een gebrek aan kennis of feiten van en over het watersysteem. Via de Perspectievenmethode analyseerden we het huidige, dominante perspectief op water- en rivierbeheer in Nederland. Hiertoe is een vragenlijst opgesteld, die is ingevuld door een groot aantal waterprofessionals. Daaruit blijkt dat het huidige perspectief uitgaat van een hoge mate van controleerbaarheid van het watersysteem, waarde hecht aan expertkennis en een redelijk tot groot vertrouwen in technologie heeft. Voorts is er een voorkeur voor een meer natuurlijke en aanbod gestuurde inrichting van het watersysteem zonder dat dit ten koste gaat van de beheersbaarheid ervan. @en

In this article, the authors address the challenge of including societal responses, society-environment interactions, discontinuity, and surprise in environmental scenario analysis. They do so through developing and testing a perspective-based simulation game for a typical Dutch river stretch. Concepts deriving from Cultural Theory, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, and Transition Theory provide the input for the game design. Players take on the role of water managers, responding to events and developments in the water-society system under specific realizations of a climate scenario. Responses include the choice for specific river management options, changing coalition perspectives, and changes in advocacy coalition membership. A pilot case study shows that the simulation game is a useful tool to explore possible future river management dynamics. It generates relevant insights in the water management strategies that may be chosen under future conditions, the possible drivers underlying future societal perspective change, and the way advocacy coalitions may interact. As such, the simulation game offers great potential for developing and assessing policy relevant climate adaptation pathways, in which water-society interaction, discontinuity, and surprise is taken explicitly into account. The main challenges for future research include reducing game complexity, better representing changes in the advocacy coalitions’ strengths, and exploring more fundamental societal perspective shifts.@en