A stakeholder's evaluation of collaborative processes for maintaining multi-functional floodplains: a Dutch case study

All over the world, governments have established integrated river basin management projects on local and regional scales to combine functions, such as flood protection, nature restoration, and other potentially conflicting land uses (e.g. recreational and agricultural activities). This has led to collaborative arrangements between diverse administrative levels, sectors and actors in the planning and implementation phase. Following the finalization of the implementation phase, a new floodplain maintenance phase is called for. Maintaining multi-functional floodplains involves, for example, monitoring, the development of ecological infrastructure and the coordination of maintenance activities. This paper addresses how collaborative processes continue and are further shaped in the maintenance phase. Regional stakeholder's frames were examined with respect to the following components: incentives, collaborative process, allocation of tasks including related responsibilities, and outcomes. Analysis of an unsuccessful case study indicates that the collaborative processes on the organizational and action levels were insufficiently connected, because of the lack of a strategy to integrate the outcomes of both processes. Moreover, underlying conflicting perspectives on collaborative maintenance, an economic perspective versus a perspective of collaboration with a platform of local nature organizations, obstructed effective collaborative governance aimed at maintaining multi-functional floodplains.