The Decision Support Working Group of the Financial Incentives Alliance created a framework for developing a mix of financial incentives and policy instruments for climate adaptation. After two years of pilot projects and collaboration on financial incentives for climate adaptation, the partners concluded the Financial Incentives Alliance during the partner meeting on June 8. All three working groups were discussed. The Decision Support working group, which NextGreen supervises together with Stroom and Onderstroom, presented its final product: the Policy Mixer.

Directions

The Policy Mixer is intended for municipalities and water boards and serves as a roadmap for developing instruments and incentives for climate adaptation on private land. There are many different types of financial incentives to stimulate climate adaptation on private land, such as subsidies, services in kind, sustainable sewerage charges, and green fees. But how does a municipality arrive at a well-founded choice for a particular type of instrument?

Framework with tools

In recent years, various digital tools have been developed for climate adaptation, each of which helps to solve a piece of the puzzle. The municipalities and water boards in the working group collaborated on the basis of the issues they encounter in their practical work on climate adaptation. Under the guidance of NextGreen and Stroom en Onderstroom, they arrived at a four-step framework that provides a structure for the choices and decisions needed to create financial incentives for climate adaptation. At each step, the Policy Mixer refers to existing tools and tools from the Alliance's pilots that can help in making and substantiating choices.

Four steps based on practical experience

1. Clarifying the goals and tasks for climate adaptation. The experiences of the working group members showed that climate adaptation does not work without a proper problem analysis and clear goals.
2. Identifying the desired physical measures and the most important stakeholders. One point to note here is that in urban areas, more than half of the surface area is often private property. As a result, it is usually not possible to fully resolve climate adaptation in public spaces.
3. Determining the mix of instruments that can be used to stimulate climate adaptation on private land. This involves a mix of communication, financial incentives, and legal incentives. The experiences of the working group members show that a broad mix of instruments is needed to get residents and entrepreneurs to take action.
4. This final step of the framework zooms in further on financial incentives as part of the mix of instruments. Here, we refer to examples and tools that have been developed over the past two years in the pilots and working groups of the Financial Incentives Alliance.

The following organizations participated in the Policy Mixer: the municipalities of Dordrecht, Enschede, and Harderwijk, the Noord-Veluwe employment region, the Delfland Water Authority, and the Dommel Water Authority. We would like to thank our partners for their contributions and hope that the Policy Mixer will also help other municipalities and water authorities to stimulate climate adaptation on private land.

Together with Stroom and Onderstroom, NextGreen is working on a new learning and development process with government bodies. The aim is to use policy innovation and financial incentives to further encourage residents and entrepreneurs to engage in climate adaptation, biodiversity, energy transition, and/or improving the living environment.