The Netherlands has a long tradition in water management, mainly stemming from the geography of the country. The ‘struggle with water’ has been organised from medieval times by the water boards (waterschappen), which are the oldest democratic institutions in the Netherlands. Nowa-days the water boards, 27 in the whole of the Netherlands, are not only responsible for flood protec-tion and regulation of water levels, but for water quality management and waste water treatment as well. In the years in which the WFD implementation has been underway in the Netherlands, several issues have arisen. Cooperation between all levels of government is key. This requires as clear as possible divisions of competences between the various parties involved. It also takes much time, es-pecially in a process in which many matters have to be invented ‘on the fly’, such as criteria for des-ignating water bodies, ecological standards, and the formulation of MEP and GEP.
Two-third of the area of the Netherlands is flood prone. Storm surges at the North Sea, floods in the rivers, failure of secondary dikes, as well as heavy rainfall may cause flooding. Most of the flood prone areas rely for their existence on drainage by pumping, because their surface level may be permanently or during floods up to several metres below the surrounding water levels. During the past decades climate change is generally felt as a reason for major concern. However, the impacts of climate change on increase in extreme conditions may be up to 45% per century. If we look at the man-induced changes in land use, due to increase in population and rapid increase in the value of public and private property, then one may observe an increase of 100–1,000% per century. One should therefore wonder what would have to be our major concern.
In the paper the relevant processes are described, based on some characteristic data on water management and flood protection in the Netherlands. It is shown that impacts of climate change on water management and flood protection may be expected, but that such impacts can easily be accommodated during improvement works on water management systems and flood protection provisions that from time to time will be required. It will be much more important to take carefully into account the risk of flooding in the planning of land use development, especially for valuable types of land use like urban and industrial areas, green houses and recreation areas.