This book presents the findings of a team of scientists and practitioners who have been working on the project "Benefits of Governance in Drought Adaptation" (in short: the DROP project), which is included in the European Union's INTERREG IVB NWE programme. The DROP governance team developed a Governance Assessment Tool (GAT), which allows the governance setting of a given region for planning and realizing drought adaptation measures to be assessed. Based on this assessment, recommendations can be developed for regional water authorities concerning how to operate most effectively towards increased drought resilience in this context. The GAT has been applied to six regions in Northwest Europe: Twente and Salland in the Netherlands, Eifel-Ruhr in Germany, Brittany in France, Somerset in the United Kingdom, and Flanders in Belgium. These regions are subject to drought aspects related to nature, agriculture and freshwater. This book will aid regional water authoritiesand other relevant stakeholders interested in governance assessment, whether that context is about water, more specifically about drought or flooding events, or other environmental issues. Further, the GAT can and has also been applied more broadly to a range of governance contexts for water management and beyond.
This book draws on insights that originated from the Circular Economy and Zero Waste initiatives. Together these approaches try to boost the shift from "waste" to "resources" management. The content of this book is partially organized from a stakeholder perspective, revealing the managerial implications for public and private actors. Next to public policies, also illustrations come from the private sector. Petstar, Texperium and Walmart generously shared some of their best practices at in this regard. Cases from China, Indonesia, Mexico, the Netherlands and Romania are discussed in this book. In all of these different contexts they show ways to create collaborative schemes in order to "retain" the resources' values as much as product quality and financial circumstances permit. The reader can thus take advantage of the pragmatic viewpoints that aim to inspire policy makers, researchers, students, organisations and communities to boost the needed changes towards a Zero Waste Economy.
