Project management for water conflicts

Abstract

Water management is one of the areas where new forms of decision making are being tried. The Netherlands take a vanguard position in this field. This is not all that surprising. Because of its specific geographical location bordering the North Sea, in the river delta of some of the great European rivers, this country has maintained a unique relationship with water since time immemorial. Large parts of the country lie below sea level. Only through human intervention, the artificial separation of land from water, these tracts could be made habitable. The process of protecting the land from water intrusion with the help of infrastructural works has meanwhile reached its final stages. Over the last decades however, new problems of water management have surfaced.

This chapter is based on two papers published before in Water Resources Development, See Glasbergen, 1990; and Glasbergen, 1992b.