Institutions for long-term problems: the influence of the Dutch Delta Programme on forward-looking climate adaptation responses at the local level

Climate change requires forward-looking policy responses. Developing such responses can be challenging for governments and, therefore, specific long-term institutions have been proposed for overcoming short-termism. However, the impacts of such institutions have been underexplored. In this paper, we analyze the influence of a long-term institution, the Dutch Delta Programme, on local governments’ decisions. The paper results are based on an analysis of climate adaptation strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects and interviews with policymakers, across seven Dutch municipalities. Results indicate that while local adaptation strategies are largely forward looking, adaptation projects tend to focus on solving present-day issues. We found that the Delta Programme enabled local governments to make forward-looking decisions and policies, by: (1) providing knowledge about climate vulnerabilities, (2) creating a broader framing of the issue of climate change, and (3) providing guidance for developing local climate adaptation policies.


Introduction
The changing climate puts extra pressure on the urban environment.In the past 40 years, the frequency of heatwaves and extreme precipitation has significantly increased in urban areas (IPCC 2022).The impacts of climate change present serious health threats (Orru, Ebi, and Forsberg 2017;San Jos e et al. 2018;Silva et al. 2017;IPCC 2022) and are expected to negatively impact mortality (Botzen et al. 2020).Damages caused by climate change to Dutch infrastructure and real estate are estimated at e33 to e124 billion by the year 2050 (Delta Commissioner 2020).The urge to anticipate, mitigate, and adapt to climate change impacts is growing, also considering the unprecedented drought events of 2018, 2019 and 2022 and the major flood in 2021.To prepare for a changing climate, investments in aboveground and underground water infrastructure provide important opportunities, because these investments involve a large amount of resources and couple multiple long-term objectives such as water safety and sustainability (Pot 2021).To make sure that governments anticipate and adapt to climate change with their investment decisions, forward-looking decisions will be essential: decisions by which governments anticipate future challenges when investing in their infrastructure, by choosing robust and/or flexible solutions to deal with changing future circumstances (Pot 2019).
Making forward-looking decisions can be especially challenging for governments because of their election cycles and focus on short-term gains and their accountability to current constituents (H€ oglund et al. 2018; B€ uhrs 2012).Scholars have therefore developed ideas about new institutions and governance frameworks (B€ uhrs 2012;Tonn 2018) and possible institutional reforms to safeguard the interests of future generations (Boston and Berman 2017).But there is limited knowledge about the extent to which specific long-term institutions are indeed capable of successfully influencing the adoption of forward-looking policies and decisions by governments.Institutions are established forms or practices that influence policy making.Long-term institutions are focused on safeguarding policy stability in a certain domain and often tend to be positioned at national or international levels of governance, while many forward-looking decisions need to be made by governments at the local level.This paper aims to address this gap, by analyzing the impact of a specific long-term institution on local climate adaptation strategies and decisions.The selected institution is the Dutch Delta Programme that is responsible for safeguarding long-term water management and making the Dutch delta climate proof.To climate-proof the country, the Delta Programme has created a programme on Spatial Adaptation (DPRA, commonly used acronym based on the Dutch name) as of 2015.The DPRA aims to facilitate local and regional governments and businesses to take action to adapt to climate change, by focusing on stimulating cooperation and raising awareness (Termeer, Dewulf, and Biesbroek 2017).We use the DPRA to study the influence of a long-term institution on municipal climate adaptation policies and decisions, as spatial planning at the local level is the responsibility of municipalities (OECD 2014).The Delta programme has been designed as a long-term institution transcending regular political cycles by having its own legal act (Deltawet) and budget (Deltafonds), by revising the underlying longterm plans about water safety, freshwater and spatial adaptation in cycles of six years, and by being led by a Delta Commissioner appointed for seven years (Werners, van de Sandt, and Jaspers 2009).
The overall research question of this paper is: How does a long-term institution that is designed for establishing long-term policy responses to climate change contribute to forward-looking strategies and decisions of local governments?Sub-questions that this paper addresses are: Q1: Which elements of the Dutch Delta programme for local climate adaptation are adopted in local adaptation strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects?
Q2: How forward-looking are local adaptation strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects?
Q3: How does the Dutch Delta programme enhance forward-looking decisions at the local level?
The study is based on a qualitive data analysis of policy documents and interviews.We study the influence of the DPRA in 7 cases (i.e.municipalities) in the Netherlands.The collected data consists of documents covering climate adaptation strategies, investment plans, and adaptation projects (n ¼ 79 documents) and interviews (n ¼ 16) with the municipalities' policymakers.This paper is structured as follows: Section 2 provides the theoretical framework.In Section 3, we introduce the Delta Programme as a long-term institution and discuss the research methodology.Section 4 presents the results and answers to the research sub-questions.Section 5 discusses the main findings and Section 6 provides the answer to the main question and suggests future research directions.

Conceptual framework
The conceptual framework that this paper uses consists of: (1) the framework for analyzing the forward-looking elements (Pot et al. 2019(Pot et al. , 2018) ) that are present in the DPRA and their adoption by local governments within their climate adaptation strategies, plans, and decisions and (2) the streams of the Multiple Streams Framework (Kingdon 2011;Howlett 2019) to be able to explain how and what contents of the DPRA become part of climate adaptation policy and forward-looking decisions at the local level.

Forward-looking decisions
To analyze to what extent local climate adaptation policies adopt elements of the DPRA and, therefore, become more forward-looking, we use the forward-looking decision making framework.This framework is especially useful to analyze formal plans and decisions of governments and assess the extent to which these incorporate forward-looking elements.Making forward-looking decisions, can be challenging for democratic governments as they are faced with short-term election and budget cycles.Long-term problems that seem to be less urgent become easily underprioritized: think of gradual climate change, a transition to circular material use, adoption of new technologies that unfold at different time scales.Short-term climate impacts like the flood event of 2021, can enable governments to prepare for future climate change, for example, by increasing water storage capacity and changing the locations of critical infrastructure (building back better).Following Pot et al. (2018), we define forwardlooking decisions as decision containing "a problem definition that includes a long time horizon and future developments, a solution that is robust or flexible to cope with uncertainty and a justification that relies on desired long-term goals or possible future scenarios" (176).The forward-looking framework therefore consists of three dimensions: a forward-looking problem definition, solution and justification.
The first dimension, a forward-looking problem definition, consists of references to uncertain future problems and developments in a governmental decision.The corresponding time horizon is important: a longer time horizon to discuss the problem shows the capability of a government to anticipate future circumstances.A minimum time horizon of ten years can be seen as long term as it exceeds the regular political election cycles and is needed to prevent short sightedness and political myopia (Boston and Berman 2017).
The second dimension in the framework comprises robust and/or flexible solutions.A robust solution remains effective during its lifetime under a wide range of possible future circumstances (Halim, Kwakkel, and Tavasszy 2016;Ben-Haim 2006).To assure robustness, pilots or experiments, and extreme case scenarios are used.A flexible solution is adaptable to changing environmental conditions (Dewulf and Termeer 2015).Furthermore, iterative recalibration and monitoring are required to ensure the long-term effectiveness of a solution.
The third dimension of the framework is that the decision is justified with future visions and/or multiple future scenarios.The use of multiple future scenarios provides a more plausible description of future conditions and enables actors to deal with uncertainty (Walker et al. 2003).Explicit future visions and goals can also justify policy decisions in a forward-looking manner.

Multiple streams framework
To explain how forward-looking decisions come about and are influenced by the DPRA, this paper uses the multiple streams framework to include the political, institutional, and ambiguous decision-making context in which governments decide about long-term strategies and projects that contribute to climate change adaptation.The term forward looking in regard to forward-looking decisions should not be mistaken for acting rationally (Dahlberg and Lindstr€ om 1998).Decision making about long-term investments in climate change adaptation is anything but linear or rational because of the many uncertainties, the plurality of actors, the large range of possible solutions, and the competing objectives involved.Under such ambiguous conditions, a rational choice or linear model will not adequately explain how governments arrive at decisions.This paper, therefore, starts from the more chaotic decision-making theory of the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) (Kingdon 2011) and recent developments of this framework (Howlett, McConnell, andPerl 2015, 2016;Howlett 2019).The MSF is well-suited to explain the influence of certain actors and institutions on decisions in situations of ambiguity and uncertainty (Zahariadis 2014).
The MSF is a revised version of the original garbage can model of decision making (Cohen, March, and Olsen 1972) by Kingdon (2011).The framework consists of relatively independent streams of problems, solutions and politics, that can be seen as parallel and ongoing processes in which actors operate and that are shaped by informal and formal institutional rules (Kingdon 2003;Howlett, McConnell, and Perl 2016;Jones et al. 2016).Unlike the garbage can model, Kingdon's multiple streams framework does not focus on decision making but was developed to explain agenda-setting processes.Howlett (2016) proposed to re-introduce the choice opportunity stream to the MSF, to be able to apply the MSF beyond the agenda-setting phase of policy-making processes.As we are interested in the production of climate adaptation policies and decisions by local governments, we use the MSF that consists of four streams: problems, solutions, politics and choice opportunities.Forward-looking decisions can only arise when forward-looking elements (long-term problems, flexible and/or robust solutions, and scenarios or visions) are part of the problems, solutions, and choice opportunities stream and also become adopted in the politics stream.
The problems stream contains the policy problems and their problem definitions that compete for the attention of the decision makers.The problem definition depends on the framing of actors.The problem stream also consists of focusing events: external events or shocks that may help actors to focus on a particular problem or frame a problem in a particular way.These are occasional events that attract the attention of policymakers and affect a large group of people (Birkland 1998).Examples are extreme weather events that result in damage to private properties.
The solutions stream consists of ideas and solutions from experts.Whether these solutions have access to the governmental arena in which decisions are made depends on the resources and skills of these experts and of particular policy entrepreneurs (Wu, Ramesh, and Howlett 2015;Meijerink and Stiller 2013).Policy entrepreneurs can advocate certain solutions or policy proposals and try to find and manipulate the framing of specific problems that can fit to their solution.
The choice opportunities stream is based on "occasions when an organization is expected to produce behavior that can be called a decision" (Cohen et al. 1972, 33).This choice opportunities stream consists of the pre-set opportunities for decision making within organizations and the specific rules, procedures, and norms relevant to examining options and making decisions (Howlett, McConnell, and Perl 2016).An example can be the budget allocation cycle of public sector organizations.We used this stream to identify moments when decisions are made to adopt climate adaptation strategies or to implement specific climate adaptation-related projects.
The politics stream consists of government officials within the legislative and executive branches of government.Their decisions are influenced by political ideologies, public opinions and pressure groups (Birkland 1998;Kingdon 2003).Contents of the politics stream that influence decision-making processes are the personal beliefs and leadership style of government officials, peer pressure from interest groups, political party agendas, the election cycle and changes in administration, and the national mood.
Figure 1 displays our conceptual framework.

Methods
In this section we: (1) introduce Dutch water management and the Delta Programme as a long-term institution, (2) introduce the case selection of local governments and adaptation projects, (3) report the data collection and (4) describe the data analysis.This figure shows the relationship between the streams (the decision-making process) and elements of a forward-looking decision.As decisions always influence the contents of the streams, this is a cyclical process (hence, the arrow from decision back to streams).
that the current shape of the country is the result of centuries of fighting against water and proclaiming land from the sea.The system of regional water authorities was founded in the 13th century and is one of the oldest continuously functioning governance institutions.Two significant river flood events in the 1990s gave rise to the Delta Commission in 2009, which proposed substantial institutional changes in water governance to ensure focused and stable attention for adapting to the threat of climate change in the Netherlands.As a result, the Delta Programme was set up in 2010, is managed by a Delta Commissioner, financed by a Delta Fund, and is institutionalized with the specific Delta Act of 2012 (Bloemen, Van Der Steen, and Van Der Wal 2019).The Delta Programme focuses on long-term protection against flooding and sea level rise, freshwater supply, and stimulating local and regional climate adaptation.As water management is a multi-level public responsibility in the Netherlands, the Delta Commissioner works closely together with municipalities, regional water authorities and provinces on the ambition to make the Netherlands water robust and climate-proof in 2050 (see Table 1 for an overview of the tasks of each governmental level).The Delta Commissioner is appointed for seven years, to not be dependent on political cycles, and is responsible for keeping other actors engaged and motivated to take action and start working on new developments.In addition, he or she delivers an annual report on the status of the Delta Programme (OECD 2014).The Delta Fund is a guaranteed budget to ensure flood safety, freshwater supply, and climate adaptation with an average annual budget of e1.25 billion to cover required investments, organizational costs, and maintenance and replacement costs (Delta Commissioner 2021).
The Delta Programme has specifically embraced an adaptive management approach to water, focusing on pathways with tipping points at which water management and climate adaptation strategies need to be changed in response to climate change impacts (Zevenbergen et al. 2018).To reduce the chance of both under-and overspending, adaptive strategies for flood safety, freshwater supply and spatial adaptation needed to be designed: so-called Delta Decisions.Delta decisions are monitored and revised every six years based on the newest available knowledge on climate change impacts and impacts and consequences of technical solutions to adapt to climate change.The Delta Decisions build upon the climate change projections of the Dutch weather institute (KNMI) and, with that, adopt a very long time horizon up until 2120.The decisions provide policies, safety standards and strategies for specific regions and themes.The Delta Programme includes Delta decisions about water safety, freshwater supply, the IJsselmeer, Rhine-Meuse delta and spatial adaptation.
The Delta Decision on Spatial Adaptation is a national policy aimed to limit the impact of climate change on the urban environment.This decision was added to the Delta Programma in 2015.The DPRA provides recommendations for climate adaptation and a general ambition for a climate-proof Delta in 2050.However, the DPRA does not undertake climate adaptive projects itself.The province, regional water authorities and municipalities are responsible for the spatial planning and implementation of climate adaptation (OECD 2014).Local governments are expected to integrate climate adaptation within their local policies and projects.The DPRA and Delta Commissioner mainly focus on efforts to facilitate cooperation and raising awareness (Verduijn, Meijerink, and Leroy 2012;Termeer, Dewulf, and Biesbroek 2017).Local governments have committed themselves to contributingalso with financial meansto climate adaptation action with the national agreement on climate adaptation (2018).Half of the means for the measures within this agreement (total 600 million euros) come from the national government and half comes from the local and regional governments.As of 2021, local governments are also able to request a financial contribution for climate adaptation measures by the national government through the DPRA (Impulsregeling Klimaatadaptatie).

Case selection
Municipalities are responsible for climate adaptation at the local level.We selected seven municipalities to study the influence of the DPRA (Table 2).Municipalities were selected based on two criteria: 1. Size: we focused on medium to large municipalities (between 100,000 and 200,000 inhabitants) to create a comparable dataset and because municipalities of a larger size are more likely to produce more forward-looking decisions (Pot 2019).Based on their population size, the selected municipalities represent 19% of the Dutch population (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek 2021).2. Data availability: the municipality has an adaptation strategy that has been approved by the municipal legislative branch (the council), was willing to participate in two interviews, and had implemented specific climate adaptation projects.

Data collection
To study the influence of the Dutch Delta Programme on climate adaptation and forward-looking decisions at the local level, we use an analysis of (1) the Delta Programme on Spatial Adaptation, (2) adaptation strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects, and (3) interviews.First, we analyzed the forward-looking elements that are mentioned in the DPRA.Documents from the Delta Programme consist of the chapters on spatial adaptation from the Delta Programmes 2015-2021.Second, we analyzed the extent to which local adaptation strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects adopt the DPRA (Q1) and, third, analyzed to what extent they are forward looking (Q2).As strategy, we collected the climate adaptation strategies.As investment plans, we collected the municipal sewerage and drainage plans: a legally required document containing standardized guidelines for water drainage that includes long-term investments in urban water management.We selected the most recent documents available in 2021.Furthermore, an adaptation project was selected based on two criteria: (1) the project was put forward by the interviewee as a good example of climate adaptation according to the municipality and (2) the project took place in the existing public space.All documents were retrieved from the municipal council information systems.In total, we analyzed 79 documents (see Table 3 and Appendix A1 [online supplemental material]).Third, for Q3 we conducted two additional interview rounds with municipalities' policymakers to create a better understanding of the way decisions on adaptation strategies and projects were made and the ways in which the DPRA influences these decisions and local climate adaptation.The first round of interviews was aimed at understanding the progress in terms of climate adaptation within the municipality and to select specific adaptation projects with the interviewee.In preparation for the first interview round, we developed a rough timeline that contained the relevant decisions that led to the current adaptation strategy of the municipality.The second interview round was semi-structured and used to verify the presence of forward- looking aspects in adaptation strategies, plans and projects and to further explore the role and actions of the DPRA towards municipalities, according to these municipalities.Again, we presented the timeline, but also included the analysis of strategies, plans and investment decisions.Interviewees consisted of policymakers and advisors in the field of climate or water (see Appendix A2 [online supplementary material]).

Data analysis
We analyzed the transcribed interviews and primary documents in Atlas.ti(version 9) by dividing the data per research question.For Q1 and Q2, a code network was developed based on the forward-looking decisions framework (Pot et al. 2018).During the coding, codes were also added inductively, especially for the elements that were part of the DPRA and contained a further operationalization of the forward-looking framework or additions to the framework.For example, a large-scale long-term problem such as climate change was further divided into more specific components and, hence, codes (e.g.sea level rise, urban heat island etc.).The code network for Q1 and Q2 was similar as we wanted to compare the forward-looking elements in the DPRA with the presence of these elements in local adaptation strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects.
For Q3, we used the interviews with municipalities that were recorded and transcribed to check our analysis of primary documents.This analysis focused on understanding how the DSPA influences local adaptation activities according to the municipalities.As a basis for this analysis, we created a code network with the four streams of the MSF.The code network was extended during the coding process, as inductively new sub-codes for specific contents of the streams were developed.We also coded explicit references to DPRA to further understand the process behind the adoption of adaptation strategies, plans and investment decisions.

Results
In this section, we present: (1) which forward-looking elements from the DPRA are taken up in local adaptation strategies, plans and projects; (2) to what extent adaptation strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects are forward looking; and (3) how the DPRA enhances forward-looking decisions on local climate change adaptation.

DPRA elements taken up in local adaptation strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects
As a starting point for our analysis, we identified which forward-looking elements the Delta Programme on Spatial Adaptation offers (see Table 4).
The DPRA employs a problem definition with a long time horizon in relation to its objective to develop a water-robust and climate-proof Netherlands by 2050.Furthermore, the DPRA emphasizes specific future challenges as a result of climate change: waterlogging, drought, heat and flooding.Furthermore, within the DPRA, there is an explicit link with other long-term problems and transitions, such as the energy transition, the housing shortages and the circular economy.
As to proposed flexible solutions, the DPRA includes risk dialogues, an iterative process, and monitoring.The DPRA recommends the following iterative process: identifying climate vulnerabilities through stress tests, discussing the vulnerabilities with citizens and stakeholders in a risk dialogue, using these results to draft an adaptation strategy, and repeating this process every six years to adapt to the newest climate scenarios.The DPRA also recommends robust approaches and solutions by providing pilot stress tests and standardized stress tests and access to selected pilot projects.In addition, knowledge resources are available from the DPRA via different networks, to show examples of local projects and raise awareness.
DPRA emphasizes a forward-looking justification based on the climate scenarios of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI), that has developed multiple possible future scenarios based on variations in worldwide increases in temperature and changes in air flows.The ambitions of the DPRA are embedded in different national legal policy documents, namely the National Adaptation Strategy and the national agreement on climate adaptation (Bestuursakkoord Klimaatadaptatie 2018).In particular, the National Adaptation Strategy provides a long-term future vision for climate adaptation.Finally, financial resources are available via a fund for climate adaptation (Impulsregeling klimaatadaptatie 2021-2027) with a budget of e200 million on the condition of 66% co-financing by the local government.
Subsequently, we tracked which elements from the DPRA are adopted by local governments in their: (1) local adaptation strategies, (2) investment plans and (3) adaptation projects (Figure 2).
The first column of Figure 2 gives an overview of which forward-looking elements from the DPRA are found in adaptation strategies.The ambitions of the DPRA and the time horizon are reflected in the local adaptation strategies: all adaptation strategies refer to a water-robust and climate-proof Netherlands by 2050.Some adaptation strategies shortened the ambition to 2030 or 2040: We have seen ourselves as frontrunners and as frontrunners you have to act before the rest.We have already secured a fair amount of funding and knowledge, and we want to continue to innovate in this field.So, we must be more ambitious than most.[I.8] Future problems in adaptation strategies correspond with the four climate impacts distinguished by DPRA, although flooding is mentioned in three of the seven cases.That flooding is anticipated less, can be explained because these municipalities are not particularly exposed to flooding from the sea or the main rivers.All adaptation strategies include climate stress tests.Several stress tests are based on the climate impact scenarios until 2050 that DPRA also uses.Other strategies explicitly adopt the DPRA standardized stress tests (version 2020).In addition, the majority of adaptation strategies (5/7) are also based on risk dialogues, the recommended step after the stress test to discuss vulnerabilities with stakeholders.Based on stress tests and risk dialogues, some municipalities created an implementation agenda.All municipalities will monitor progress on climate adaptation, but none mention the intention to revise the adaptation strategy in a cycle of every six years, as recommended by the DPRA.The justification of the adaptation strategies is based on the DPRA itself and three municipalities also base their strategies on KNMI climate scenarios.In conclusion, local adaptation strategies contain most of the forward-looking elements offered by the DPRA.
The second column of Figure 2 gives an overview of which forward-looking elements from the DPRA are found in investment plans: the municipal sewerage and drainage plans.Investment plans identified climate change as a future problem and some used a long time horizon in the problem definition.In some cases, drought and heat were not anticipated as future problems and flooding is not mentioned in any of the investment plans.As to forward-looking solutions, stress tests with future scenarios of precipitation patterns and extreme weather events were included.Four investment plans referred to the KNMI climate scenarios and four investment plans used the DPRA as forward-looking justification.
The third column in Figure 2 gives an overview of which forward-looking elements from the DPRA are found in adaptation projects.No adaptation projects mentioned climate change directly as a future problem.However, all projects did use the broader framing of the DPRA by including specific future problems related to climate change: waterlogging, drought or heat stress.Uptake of forward-looking solutions is limited to monitoring climate impacts and using stress tests.The DPRA is mentioned once as a long-term justification for the adaptation project.
Compared to adaptation strategies, the number of forward-looking DPRA elements in investment plans is lower, and the number of DPRA elements in adaptation projects is still lower and mostly limited to the problem definition and the use of stress tests.

Extent to which adaptation strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects
are forward-looking We also analyzed the extent to which adaptation strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects can be considered forward-looking decisions.For that purpose, we assessed the consideration of long-term problems with the adoption of a long-term time horizon, the choice for robust or flexible solutions, and the justification of climate adaptation-related decisions with visions or scenarios.To measure these dimensions, we use the different forward-looking elements of the DPRA as analyzed in Section 4.1.Figure 3 provides the normalized number of quotations for each forwardlooking criterion in adaptation strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects.
All adaptation strategies use a long-term problem definition and time horizon, for example on the basis of the stress test: "This stress test provides a prediction of the impacts of waterlogging, drought and heat in 2050" (strategy Enschede "Blauwe nota").Flexible solutions are present in the shape of risk dialogues, regular monitoring cycles and an iterative process.Robust solutions consist of stress tests, green-blue networks, water retention and pilot projects.The justification of the adaptation strategy is in three cases based on multiple KNMI climate scenarios.The main vision on which the adaptation strategies are based is the DPRA.In conclusion, all strategies have a forward-looking problem, solution and justification, but some more prominently than others.
All investment plans identify climate change as a future problem, four investment plans provide a time horizon to discuss policy problems that exceeds the minimal ten years, in three cases in connection to the DPRA ambition of becoming climate-proof and water-robust.All investment plans provide robust solutions, because extreme scenarios are tested within stress tests and some promote pilot projects.Flexible solutions are limited; most investments are in monitoring in relation to waterlogging.Four investment plans refer to the KNMI climate scenarios.In conclusion, investment plans contain less forward-looking elements compared to adaptation strategies, with a strong presence of robust solutions, and the relatively strong presence of long-term problems and visions but limited presence of future scenarios, long-term time horizons, and adoption of more flexible solutions.
Finally, how forward-looking are the adaptation projects?Just one adaptation project used a time horizon that stretched beyond ten years and two projects referred to future climate impacts.Six projects aim to realize robust forward-looking solutions in the form of water retention and by greening the public space to create more water storage.Three projects are based on stress tests and only Delft also refers to the risk dialogue.The project in Delft was also the only project that included a flexible solution by monitoring the effects of a new green area (a park) in a grey urban area, monitoring, for example, air temperature and windspeed.
Projects seemed to be mostly concerned with solving short-term pressing local issues, such as limited parking space in the cases of Arnhem, Zwolle, Dordrecht.The opportunity for local projects is that climate adaptation becomes integrated within other investments in the urban public space.Zwolle explicitly embraced the ambition of realizing a climate-proof city with its project to invest in the railway station area.Dordrecht and Zwolle also referred to the ambition of becoming energy neutral within their projects.We did not find evidence for the use of future scenarios to support adaptation projects.

The role of the DPRA for climate adaptation and forward-lookingness at the local level
Based on the analysis of primary documents together with a further in-depth processual understanding from the interviews, we will now reflect on the four streams of the Figure 3. Forward-looking (FWL) criteria tested at the local level, in strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects.Forward-looking criteria include future problems (P), long time horizons (PT), robust (SR) and flexible (SF) solutions, visions (V) and scenarios (S).The total number of quotations for the adaptation strategy, investment plan and adaptation project in our dataset are respectively 540, 80 and 78, all are weighted equally.The normalized value is calculated as follows: The greatest number of quotations are marked with 1 (dark blue/black in print), a zero (yellow/lightest grey in print) indicates the absence of the FWLcriteria.A high value indicates a high frequency of quotations for a specific forward-looking criterion in relation to the other case studies.
MSF to explain how the DPRA enhances the forward-looking extent of local climate adaptation strategies, plans and projects by influencing: (1) which problems are discussed (problems stream), (2) which solutions are considered (solutions stream), (3) when to make decisions (choice opportunities stream), and (4) how the DPRA reaches out to political executives (politics stream).

Problem stream
The influence of DPRA via the problem stream consists of the agenda-setting and framing of climate-change effects of flooding, drought, waterlogging, and heat.In the problem stream, we see that these climate impacts are often considered by municipalities, especially within their adaptation strategies.The framing of the DPRA with its emphasis on specific climate impacts stimulated local policymakers to develop a more forward-looking problem definition and consider and connect climate impacts.Interviewees [I.7, I.11] indicated the importance of the DPRA, which put the impacts of climate change on the agenda.Policymakers included these impacts in adaptation strategies due to the framing and focus by the DPRA: The DPRA has set general ambitions for climate adaptation; if they had not, we would have looked at it.But perhaps we would look much more at the current problems, but less at problems such as heat and drought.[I.11]Furthermore, interviewees indicated that extreme weather events, so-called focusing events within the MSF, helped to develop a more forward-looking problem definition.For example, interviewees [I.2, I.5, I.8, I.10] indicated that heat stress and drought were underrated problems until recently.The heatwaves and enduring periods of drought in the summers of 2018, 2019 and 2020 did increase the awareness: "A heat wave with temperatures of 40 C worked as a wake-up call" [I.5].The occurrence of these events helped local policymakers to frame heat stress and drought as a climate change related problem.
Local policymakers also frame climate adaptation as an improvement of the spatial quality in adaptation projects [I.9, I.10, I.11, I.12, I.13].This is also the emphasis of the DPRA as it is not called climate adaptation but spatial adaptation.One interviewee, for example, raises the question; "Do we still want to live in the city center in a couple of years, or has it become too hot?" [I.13].Developing a green station area to create an attractive area and thereby reduce heat stress is an example of a project in which climate adaptation also improves the spatial quality of the urban environment.This framing results in more support because it speaks more to the mind of the citizens and the local council.

Solution stream
The solution stream includes the influence of the DPRA on the technical experts, climate change adaptation policy advisors and water managers who work on the development of technical solutions.The DPRA influenced local experts by providing knowledge resources, insight into local climate vulnerabilities and structure to local climate adaptation policies.Municipalities who have been working on climate-related issues were involved in drafting the DPRA [I.1, I.2, I.3, I.8]: "15 years ago, a colleague started as a water policy advisor and then started with what we now call climate adaptation" [I.8].The local experts and planners used the DPRA knowledge resources to draft the adaptation strategies.Furthermore, national stress tests are available via the DPRA.The stress tests were a motivation to perform local stress tests as the national or regional tests could not provide the necessary detail."We developed our own stress tests which contains more municipal detail" [I.5].In addition, the standardized test was used to increase the comparability of the different stress tests in the regional network: Within the regional network we found that all municipalities and water boards carried out the stress tests in their own way.There was quite a bit difference between the tests.Now we have one standard test for the entire region, using the standard of the DPRA.[I.4]Furthermore, The DPRA structures the process of establishing the climate adaptation policy [I.2, I.8, I.11, I.15] and legitimatized the ongoing work of frontrunning municipalities [I.11].Municipalities, on their behalf, also share new solutions and knowledge with the DPRA via the website spatial adaptation.

Choice opportunities stream
The choice opportunity stream explains at which specific decision moments climate adaptation policies and investments are typically discussed.The DPRA requires municipalities to embed climate adaptation within the spatial planning; this takes place at three decision moments: (1) budget allocation, (2) renewing of policy documents and (3) during maintenance in the public space.
The first opportunity is the municipal budget allocation.The local council determines the climate adaptation budget for the next year and thereby the extent to which climate adaptation is applied.Only two out of seven municipalities have a budget allocated for climate adaptation.In other cases, the funding depends on other funds within the municipality (e.g. the municipal drainage and sewerage budget).However, not having a dedicated budget is not experienced as a limiting factor by interviewees, because climate adaptation is always combined with other spatial projects and problems: "Climate adaptation is combined with the large maintenance in the public space for the coming years" [I.15].Interviewees [I.3, I.5, I.8, I.14] indicated that it is possible to obtain more funding to add a climate adaptive element to a project.The second opportunity arises when a policy document on spatial planning expires.The DPRA expects municipalities to embed climate adaptation within their spatial planning.Several municipalities use the Environmental and Planning Act (soon to be the New Environmental Act) to embed climate adaptation.Other municipalities use the municipality sewerage and drainage plan as the basis for embedding climate adaptation.The third opportunity arises at the time of maintenance in public space.We saw that policymakers used this opportunity to add climate adaptative measures into a project, e.g.combining sewerage maintenance with the construction of water retention areas: "If we perform maintenance in the city, we will tackle all the tasks in that street" [I.16].A future choice opportunity will be the revision of the climate adaptation strategy, as is dictated by the DPRA as part of a six-year cycle.

Politics stream
We found the direct influence of the DPRA on the local level via the politics stream to be limited, but there is an indirect influence through networks.Local politicians and political executives are often part of regional, national or international networks, including networks that promote climate adaptation and in which the DPRA is present (e.g.Association of Netherlands Municipalities and the City Deal Climate Adaptation).The DPRA was part of the City Deal Climate adaptation and interacted with municipalities, to promote and stimulate climate adaptation.The City Deal Climate Adaptation was a source of inspiration for policymakers, and local strategies are based on the examples from this network [I.1, I.3, I.5, I.9, I.13].Such networks are developed to join forces, share knowledge and exchange solutions regarding climate adaptation.The intended effect of these networks is twofold; (1) to share knowledge and increase the operational capacity of individual municipalities; and (2) to provide peerpressure and motivate other actors to engage in climate adaptation.An interviewee says the following about the effect of these networks: "The people, exchange of knowledge and experience ensure that you keep going."[I.3]

Key findings
In this paper, we analyzed the impact of a specific long-term institution on forwardlooking plans and decisions at the local level.For that purpose, we analyzed the influence of one particular long-term institution, the Dutch Delta programme, and more specifically its programme for climate adaptation, DPRA, on decisions of municipalities about climate change adaptation strategies, investments and projects.In the literature, we see more examples emerging of long-term institutions aiming to stimulate forward-looking decisions, for example, the Welsh Commissioner for Future Generations (Tonn 2018).But so far, it remains unclear whether these institutions successfully influence more long-term oriented government policies.
To determine the influence of a long-term institution on more forward-looking governmental decisions, we tracked the presence of forward-looking elements of the DPRA within local climate change adaptation strategies, investment plans, and projects.In a second step, we assessed the forward-looking extent of local strategies, plans and projects.We found a clear difference between the strategic and the operational level, as strategies areand this can be expectedmore often explicitly concerned with long-term climate impacts and adopt several elements of DPRA and are therefore more forward looking, while the implementation of projects falls behind in terms of anticipating and adapting to climate change.So far, projects that were indicated by local governments to have a link with climate change adaptation, still tend to mostly focus on solving current pressing issues.This highlights the importance of including an analysis of both strategies and policies on the one hand and specific investments and projects on the other hand in future research, as there clearly can be implementation gaps (Cairney 2009), something that is also highlighted in the latest IPCC report (2022).On the other hand, in our case, we should be careful with referring to this as an implementation gap, because most adaptation strategies have been adopted recently and most projects were implemented before the adoption of this strategy.Local governments are still working on the integration of climate adaptation in legally binding policy instruments that are part of the new Dutch Environmental Act (Omgevingswet), expected to come into force in 2023.But, still, to decrease exposure and vulnerabilities towards climate change impacts, the actual implementation of adaptation projects is crucial to make living in a Delta a safe endeavor for the long term.
Our paper confirms that long-term institutions are useful to stimulate democratic governments to act upon creeping crises and long-term transitions (Boin, Ekengren, and Rhinard 2020).The Delta programme has a particular institutional design to secure investments in water management and stimulate the national, regional and local governments to prepare for climate change, with a legal mandate, earmarked budget and commissioner that is appointed for seven years, and strong connections to regional and local governments.The Delta Programme, and DPRA more specifically, were most useful for the framing and agenda setting of the issue of climate change in political arenas, to provide governments with instruments to actually map exposure to climate change impacts (such as climate stress tests) as a start for action, and to provide a challenging future mission of becoming climate proof and making sure policies are revised often enough, and that impacts of policies are monitored.The direct political influence of the DPRA on local politicians and policymakers is limited.The institution, therefore, does not necessarily reduce political myopia at the local level (Bonfiglioli and Gancia 2013), but tries to sidestep it by providing tools to the actors within the other streams, for example, by stimulating future revision cycles for adopted adaptation strategies (choice opportunities stream), by sharing lessons learned from pilot projects (solutions stream), and by linking events of heat, drought, flooding and waterlogging to climate change (problems stream).This enabled local policymakers to connect short-term issues with the long-term climate ambitions (Dolan 2021).Of course, we need to be careful in transferring these findings, as the Dutch setting is a specific one, especially with regards to water management.Still, the way of organizing long-term institutions and the way they ensure long-term commitment to certain policy areas, can provide lessons for other countries and contexts.
In addition to the role of long-term institutions, we found that extreme weather events stimulated a stronger sense of urgency for climate adaptation by policymakers and, as a result, enabled climate policy adoption (Massey et al. 2014).Focusing events can stimulate awareness and a political urgency to act upon the issue, which can free resources for more climate adaptation action (Dolan 2021).For that, the event itself needs to be framed as a climate-change related issue.An example to show the contribution of the DPRA: a 2012 study showed that urban planners in the Netherlands did not recognize heat stress as an urgent problem, especially because they were faced with inadequate operational capacity (Runhaar et al. 2012).However, heat stress is now acknowledged as a future problem in local climate adaptation strategies throughout.

Future research directions
The aim of this research was to explain the impact of a specific long-term institution on forward-looking plans and decisions at the local level.Still, other factors may influence forward-looking decisions and policies.For example, interviewees suggested that the personal ambition of a single policymaker and the participation of political executives in networks could stimulate forward-looking decisions.In particular, the contents and organization of these networks and their contribution for forward-looking decisions should be further explored to gain more knowledge on possible governance arrangements that can contribute to more forward-looking decisions.Second, the adaptation projects in this research often preceded the adaptation strategies.Therefore, we recommend repeating this research in a few years' time, at least after the implementation of the new Dutch Environmental Act, to study the progress of municipalities when it comes to climate adaptation and monitor the effectiveness of the Delta programme in limiting climate risk exposure at the local level.For effective climate adaptation, it is crucial to study the extent to which governments succeed in implementing their local adaptation strategies as part of concrete adaptation projects.In addition, we suggest to then also analyze legally binding policy instrumentssuch as local landuse plansto see how adaptation strategies further trickle down: from strategies, to instruments, to investments and concrete projects.Finally, this research focused only on one particular long-term institutional arrangement, that of the Dutch Delta programme.A comparison of the contributions of multiple long-term institutions on governmental decisions is needed to gain more insight into effective institutional reforms for overcoming governmental myopia and developing long-term policy responses.

Conclusion
Deciding upon forward-looking strategies and actions can be difficult for governments, due to their electoral cycles and their accountability towards current constituents.In the literature, specific long-term institutions have been proposed to facilitate governments in overcoming myopia.However, the impacts of such institutions have been underexplored.In this paper, we have analyzed the influence of a long-term institution, the Dutch Delta Programme, on local governmental decisions.The forward-looking decision framework was used to assess to what extent local decisions and projects incorporated long-term problems, solutions and justifications of the Delta Decision on Spatial Adaptation (DPRA) of the Dutch Delta Programme.The Multiple Streams Framework was used to explain how the Delta Programme influenced the local governments.
Results show that elements of the DPRA are well reflected in adaptation strategies; and these can qualify as forward looking.However, local investment plans seem to be less forward-looking, while concrete climate adaptation projects are mostly oriented towards solving short-term issues.The DPRA influenced forward-looking strategies and policies by: (1) explicitly adopting extreme weather impacts as part of the problem definition of climate change, (2) methods for creating flexible and robust solutions through outlining an iteration process for adaptation strategies, standardized climate stress tests and pilot projects, and (3) proving insight in climate risk exposure and vulnerabilities and extending the time horizon by highlighting the latest available climate scenarios, the national adaptation strategy and formulating a long-term ambition of becoming climate proof in 2050.To accelerate forward-looking decisions at the local level, the DPRA specifically provides financial, knowledge resources and networks for municipalities to engage in climate adaptation.The challenge is that there is a clear gap between strategy and execution.Long-term institutions can help, especially at the strategic level, by creating increased awareness and understanding of long-term policy problems such as climate change and providing possible response strategies.They can stimulate policy attention for creeping crises.But political decisions are key for reducing climate risk exposure in urban living environments by investing in concrete spatial projects that reduce vulnerabilities to climate impacts.

3. 1 .
Figure 1.Conceptual framework.This figure shows the relationship between the streams (the decision-making process) and elements of a forward-looking decision.As decisions always influence the contents of the streams, this is a cyclical process (hence, the arrow from decision back to streams).

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Forward-looking elements from the DPRA in local adaptation strategies, investment plans and adaptation projects.This figure shows aggregated data from all municipalities; the color indicates the number of cases (municipalities) in which the element is present (yellow/lightest grey in print ¼ 0 and dark blue/black in print ¼ 7).

Table 1 .
Institutional layers and responsibilities in Dutch water management (based on OECD 2014).
MunicipalitiesLocal spatial planning (including water storage, blue-green infrastructure), sewerage collection and wastewater transport, urban drainage, stormwater collection Regional water authorities Flood defence, water quality, water quantity, wastewater treatment

Table 2 .
Overview of municipalities.

Table 3 .
Overview of data.

Table 4 .
Forward-looking elements that are promoted by the DPRA.