Social Uncertainties in Social-Ecological Systems: Policy dynamics in the Dutch Delta Programme

Policy arenas are of major importance for long-term water management.Here, decisions are made. Nevertheless, the uncertainties deriving from the policyarenas have gained very limited attention so far in future studies. We analyse longtermwater management in The Netherlands, i.e. the Dutch Delta Programme toidentify factors causing shocks and the system’s responses to that. We identified aparticipatory policy structure as a major shock. The results of this shock-systemresponse analysis result in a means to address explicate and include socialuncertainties.