Key takeaways

At the beginning of the module four learning objectives were introduced, you can find them below. Go through the key takeaways and see if you have done or learned these elements correctly and feel that you have understood the core message of this module.

• To understand how stakeholders play a role in river basin management processes and even sometimes changed designs (iteratively, in a process)
• To summarize the decision making process for Room for the River programme in the Netherlands
• To understand the added complexity of planning long time horizons, e.g. if we take next generations into account as stakeholders
• To understand what would happen if we would take the river itself as a stakeholder (or even give it legal rights)

In this module, we learned that creating a program for a river is not as easy as creating a hydrological plan and implementing it. There is more to it, because this program needs to be implemented in environment with people and many things become more complicated when people are involved. National governments, regional governments, citizens, companies, action groups, there are all sorts of stakeholders that can become involved. One important thing to take away from this is that these stakeholders have power to influence the outcome of the decision making process. Being aware of the influence of stakeholders can weaken or strengthen the outcome, depending on their role and positions in the decision making process.

Furthermore, it is important to understand that these projects are often very long-term and can take up many years. Take the room for the river program, for example, this program has taken over 20 years to complete. As a result, the people that start the program are for a large part not the people that will end the program. People come and go in governmental organisations and companies. One way to overcome problems regarding the long time horizon, is to have crystal clear agreements at the start, because a strong foundation creates a strong house.