Peter Driessen
Biographic Data
| ID | 4079606 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Driessen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Driessen |
| SIGNATURE | DRIESSEN P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Utrecht University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0724-6666 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 65 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 367 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 65 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Rising temperatures, rising vulnerabilities: Individual and community adaptation to heat stress in urban slums of Bangladesh
Employs the Everyone’s Adaptation (EoA) framework to study heat stress adaptation. • Explores eight conditions shaping adaptation in urban informal settlements. • Finds income and social capital crucial for coping with and adapting to heat stress. • Reveals gendered and age-related barriers to community-level adaptation. • Recommends long-term, inclusive policies for equitable urban resilience. Rising temperatures and intensifying heat stress dis…
Beyond imagination? Examining practitioners’ perceptions of the feasibility of transformative governance futures for sustainable land use in the Dutch peatlands
The ongoing accumulation of environmental problems worldwide has increasingly raised scholarly calls for beyond technological environmental governance. Although such alternative, more transformative approaches have been proposed in the literature, their imaginability in practice has lagged behind, especially in the presence of a technological path dependency. This research seeks to address the so-called “crisis of the imagination” by exploring tr…
Water–energy–food–ecosystem nexus: How to Frame and How to Govern
The food, energy, and water domains are strongly interrelated. The body of literature investigating these interlinkages developed into water–energy–food and, more recently, ecosystem (WEFE) nexus thinking. The WEFE nexus is concerned with cross-sectoral resource management requiring dedicated WEFE governance approaches. Among the existing WEFE nexus conceptualizations, the one that places the ecosystem at the center emphasizes the importance of e…
Conceptualising boundary work activities to enhance credible, salient and legitimate knowledge in sustainability transdisciplinary research projects
Transdisciplinary research (TDR) is one method where scientific and societal actors, each with various backgrounds, collaborate to address complex problems through knowledge co-creation. Despite its widespread use, TDR still lacks a common definition and methodology which makes it challenging to define clear mechanisms for knowledge co-creation that facilitate impact. Many authors across complementary bodies of literature provide lists of princip…
Aligning research uptake with context: Supporting researchers’ decisions towards context-appropriate research uptake strategies
Academic and non-academic societal actors alike are seeking to optimize the ways in which scientific research may contribute to sustainable development, for which a diverse range of research uptake strategies have been developed. Yet, while the literature emphasizes that the appropriateness of research uptake strategies depends on the context in which they are applied, designing appropriate research uptake strategies to fit a specific context rem…
Drawing boundaries: Negotiating a collective ‘we’ in community-supported agriculture networks
Breaking out of conventions: How scenario planners can increase their reflexivity regarding societal imaginaries
Futures imagined in scenario processes reflect both stakeholder perspectives and broader societal imaginaries: collectively-held, institutionally-stabilized visions of the future. The presence of imaginaries has mostly remained implicit in studies of scenario planning, especially in development contexts. We argue that scenario planning will benefit from reflexivity regarding imaginaries. Here, reflexivity refers to an awareness regarding differen…
Mechanisms influencing mainstreaming of adaptation in spatial development: Case studies in three Dutch municipalities
Despite adopting a mainstreaming approach to spatial adaptation, few cities actually implement it. Why this is so is disputed, as the implementation stage has been under-researched. Inspired by the “mechanism-based” strand, this paper analyses three implementation projects in the Netherlands. Mechanisms are generalizable patterns yielding more plausible explanations for phenomena than “superficial” barriers or drivers. We found one overarching me…
Clarifying and strengthening the role of law and governance in climate scenario frameworks
Shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) and shared policy assumptions (SPAs) are lauded as a common basis for climate scenario research across disciplines, yet they lack essential legal and governance elements that are indispensable when assessing future development pathways. This article sets out to address this shortcoming by explaining the interrelated but distinct features of law and governance and their downplayed roles in climate scenario res…
Wicked problems and creeping crises: A framework for analyzing governance challenges to addressing environmental land-use problems
Human societies face significant difficulties in the governance of environmental land-use problems. The challenges involved must be thoroughly understood to develop effective and legitimate governance of these often inherently wicked problems. However, in environmental governance literature, governance challenges have been described rather generally, and the characteristic features of different types of problems have not been specified. Drawing o…
Is anticipatory governance opening up or closing down future possibilities? Findings from diverse contexts in the Global South
There is an urgent need to understand how anticipation processes such as scenario planning impact governance choices in the present. However, little empirical research has been done to analyze how anticipation processes frame possibilities for action. This paper investigates how assumptions about the future open up or close down anticipatory governance actions in a large number of climate-focused anticipation processes. We focused on four Global …
City-to-city learning to enhance urban water management: The contribution of the City Blueprint Approach
Cities face several water challenges which ask for more pro-active management approaches. One option that cities have is to start networking and build learning alliances with other cities. Forming meaningful alliances however asks for clear and easily accessible city-matching methodologies which are based on a standardised assessment approach and the presence of structured and large databases. The City Blueprint Approach is an example of such a m…
Disruptive seeds: A scenario approach to explore power shifts in sustainability transformations
Over the last 2 decades, it has become increasingly evident that incremental adaptation to global environmental challenges—particularly climate change—no longer suffices. To make matters worse, systemic problems such as social inequity and unsustainable use of resources prove to be persistent. These challenges call for, such is the rationale, significant and radical systemic changes that challenge incumbent structures. Remarkably, scholarship on …
The anticipatory governance of sustainability transformations: Hybrid approaches and dominant perspectives
Anticipation methods and tools are increasingly used to try to imagine and govern transformations towards more sustainable futures across different policy domains and sectors. But there is a lack of research into the steering effects of anticipation on present-day governance choices, especially in the face of urgently needed sustainability transformations. This paper seeks to understand how different perspectives on anticipatory governance connec…
The impact of decision-making on conflict: Rethinking the roles of technocrats and residents during Tidal River Management in coastal Bangladesh
Tidal river management (TRM) is a building-with-nature practise which was locally developed to tackle the problems of polderization in the south-western delta of Bangladesh. This practise was subsequently adapted by public agencies. However, all TRM sites are associated with violent conflict. While law-enforcement agencies have often struggled to bring such conflict under control, there is variation in the extent to which conflict associated with…
Envisioning alternatives in pre-structured urban sustainability transformations: Too late to change the future
In the governance of urban sustainability transformations, participatory futures practices are increasingly popular. Yet there is a rising awareness that the success or failure of these practices depends on how they are staged and the context in which they are conducted. These contextual factors are often less than ideal, and futures practices take place at the crossroads of many pre-determined agendas and priorities. We distinguish four factors …
Strengthening foresight for governance of social-ecological systems: An interdisciplinary perspective
In recent decades, foresight has been connected to various disciplines that engage with complex societal problems, leading to specific interpretations of foresight. We offer an interdisciplinary perspective on foresight's increasing use for governance of social-ecological systems (SES). We seek to strengthen the use of foresight in this domain by bridging to insights from other disciplines that can help overcome its limitations. Participatory for…
Picture the future, play the present: Re-imagining sustainable cities through a large-scale location-based game
The urban sustainability transformations that are urgently needed will have significant effects on the daily lives of city dwellers. As ways to imagine and co-design sustainable urban futures, experiments within the present-day urban environment are increasingly popular. This paper investigates how such an experimental approach can serve as the base of an applied urban futures game that enables its players to reflect on and imagine ways to addres…
Enriching the concept of solution space for climate adaptation by unfolding legal and governance dimensions
Conspicuous interdisciplinary effort has been spent on addressing the consequences of climate change in a forward-looking way. The concept of solution space is a recent contribution to help decision-makers identify feasible and effective adaptation solutions and to provide guidance on when they should be implemented and by whom. Although the current conceptualization of solution space already considers multiple disciplines, it remains dominated b…
Participatory scenario planning and framing of social-ecological systems: An analysis of policy formulation processes in Rwanda and Tanzania
Rutting, L., J. M. Vervoort, H. Mees, and P. P. J. Driessen. 2021. Participatory scenario planning and framing of social-ecological systems: an analysis of policy formulation processes in Rwanda and Tanzania. Ecology and Society 26(4):20. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12665-260420
Towards explanations for stability and change in modes of environmental governance: A systematic approach with illustrations from the Netherlands
Studies on stability and change in modes of environmental governance often remain implicit regarding the conceptualisation, nature and causes of stability and change. Moreover, they are selective in the addressed explanatory factors. Theorising of stability and change in modes of environmental governance could be brought to the next level by enhancing the comparability and alignment of explanatory studies. This paper aims to contribute to this ef…
A Community Management Plus Model for the Governance of Rural Drinking Water Systems: A Comparative Case Study of Pond Sand Filter Systems in Bangladesh
Rural drinking water systems (RDWS) in Bangladesh and elsewhere fail more often than we would want. In an attempt to further understanding what this support could look like we in particular zoom in on the role of public agencies. We ask, (i) what conditions explain variation in collective action among the end-users of an RDWS? and, (ii) what conditions explain variation in collaboration between RDWS end-users and a public agency? We lean on conce…
Capital, rules or conflict? Factors affecting livelihood-strategies, infrastructure-resilience, and livelihood-vulnerability in the polders of Bangladesh
Coastal regions are most susceptible to the effects of climate change. To increase infrastructure-resilience of such regions, reduce livelihood-vulnerability of people living in such regions and equip them with appropriate livelihood strategies, governments have invested heavily in coastal infrastructure such as polders. This research is focused on the polders of Bangladesh. The effectiveness of Bangladesh’s polders is disputed. No large-scale, e…
A diagnostic tool for supporting policymaking on urban resilience
Urban resilience has become a popular notion among urban policymakers and scientists, as a way to deal with the many complex issues that cities face. While it has positive connotations and resonates with local urban agendas, it is not always clear what it means and what factors contribute to resilience. Additionally, critical literature observes that people's views on what resilience means can differ strongly and the many choices that are made in…
Building urban and infrastructure resilience through connectivity: An institutional perspective on disaster risk management in Christchurch, New Zealand
Public participation in environmental impact assessment: Why, who and how
The anticipatory governance of sustainability transformations: Hybrid approaches and dominant perspectives
Anticipation methods and tools are increasingly used to try to imagine and govern transformations towards more sustainable futures across different policy domains and sectors. But there is a lack of research into the steering effects of anticipation on present-day governance choices, especially in the face of urgently needed sustainability transformations. This paper seeks to understand how different perspectives on anticipatory governance connec…
Evaluating the substantive effectiveness of SEA: Towards a better understanding
Advocating for Change? How a Civil Society-led Coalition Influences the Implementation of the Forest Rights Act in India
Strengthening foresight for governance of social-ecological systems: An interdisciplinary perspective
In recent decades, foresight has been connected to various disciplines that engage with complex societal problems, leading to specific interpretations of foresight. We offer an interdisciplinary perspective on foresight's increasing use for governance of social-ecological systems (SES). We seek to strengthen the use of foresight in this domain by bridging to insights from other disciplines that can help overcome its limitations. Participatory for…
Environmental assessment in The Netherlands: Effectively governing environmental protection? A discourse analysis
Institutional work in diverse niche contexts: The case of low-carbon housing in the Netherlands
The influence of actor capacities on EIA system performance in low and middle income countries —Cases from Georgia and Ghana
Overcoming low EIA performance - A diagnostic tool for the deliberate development of EIA system capacities in low and middle income countries
An analysis framework for characterizing and explaining development of EIA legislation in developing countries—Illustrated for Georgia, Ghana and Yemen
Is anticipatory governance opening up or closing down future possibilities? Findings from diverse contexts in the Global South
There is an urgent need to understand how anticipation processes such as scenario planning impact governance choices in the present. However, little empirical research has been done to analyze how anticipation processes frame possibilities for action. This paper investigates how assumptions about the future open up or close down anticipatory governance actions in a large number of climate-focused anticipation processes. We focused on four Global …
Scaling-up low-carbon urban initiatives: Towards a better understanding
In cities worldwide, low-carbon urban initiatives (LCUIs) are realised by pioneers that prove that climate mitigation strategies can be integrated in urban development trajectories. Practitioners and scholars reflect on the need to scale-up such initiatives in order to accelerate the transition to low-carbon cities. Yet, limited conceptual clarity exists regarding the meaning of the concept of ‘scaling-up’ and the factors driving this process. Th…
Toward more flood resilience: Is a diversification of flood risk management strategies the way forward
Hegger, D. L. T., P. P. J. Driessen, M. Wiering, H. F. M. W. Van Rijswick, Z. W. Kundzewicz, P. Matczak, A. Crabbé, G. T. Raadgever, M. H. N. Bakker, S. J. Priest, C. Larrue, and K. Ek. 2016. Toward more flood resilience: Is a diversification of flood risk management strategies the way forward? Ecology and Society 21(4):52. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08854-210452
Uncertainty management strategies: Lessons from the regional implementation of the Water Framework Directive in the Netherlands
Disruptive seeds: A scenario approach to explore power shifts in sustainability transformations
Over the last 2 decades, it has become increasingly evident that incremental adaptation to global environmental challenges—particularly climate change—no longer suffices. To make matters worse, systemic problems such as social inequity and unsustainable use of resources prove to be persistent. These challenges call for, such is the rationale, significant and radical systemic changes that challenge incumbent structures. Remarkably, scholarship on …
A user perspective on the gap between science and decision-making. Local administrators’ views on expert knowledge in urban planning
A method for the deliberate and deliberative selection of policy instrument mixes for climate change adaptation
Mees, H. L. P., J. Dijk, D. van Soest, P. P. J. Driessen, M. H. F. M. W. van Rijswick, and H. Runhaar. 2014. A method for the deliberate and deliberative selection of policy instrument mixes for climate change adaptation. Ecology and Society 19(2): 58. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06639-190258
An analytical framework for capacity development in EIA — The case of Yemen
Breaking out of conventions: How scenario planners can increase their reflexivity regarding societal imaginaries
Futures imagined in scenario processes reflect both stakeholder perspectives and broader societal imaginaries: collectively-held, institutionally-stabilized visions of the future. The presence of imaginaries has mostly remained implicit in studies of scenario planning, especially in development contexts. We argue that scenario planning will benefit from reflexivity regarding imaginaries. Here, reflexivity refers to an awareness regarding differen…
Toward more resilient flood risk governance
Driessen, P. P. J., D. L. T. Hegger, M. H. N. Bakker, M. H. F. M. W. Van Rijswick, and Z. W. Kundzewicz. 2016. Toward more resilient flood risk governance. Ecology and Society 21(4):53. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08921-210453
Wicked problems and creeping crises: A framework for analyzing governance challenges to addressing environmental land-use problems
Human societies face significant difficulties in the governance of environmental land-use problems. The challenges involved must be thoroughly understood to develop effective and legitimate governance of these often inherently wicked problems. However, in environmental governance literature, governance challenges have been described rather generally, and the characteristic features of different types of problems have not been specified. Drawing o…
Water–energy–food–ecosystem nexus: How to Frame and How to Govern
The food, energy, and water domains are strongly interrelated. The body of literature investigating these interlinkages developed into water–energy–food and, more recently, ecosystem (WEFE) nexus thinking. The WEFE nexus is concerned with cross-sectoral resource management requiring dedicated WEFE governance approaches. Among the existing WEFE nexus conceptualizations, the one that places the ecosystem at the center emphasizes the importance of e…
Enriching the concept of solution space for climate adaptation by unfolding legal and governance dimensions
Conspicuous interdisciplinary effort has been spent on addressing the consequences of climate change in a forward-looking way. The concept of solution space is a recent contribution to help decision-makers identify feasible and effective adaptation solutions and to provide guidance on when they should be implemented and by whom. Although the current conceptualization of solution space already considers multiple disciplines, it remains dominated b…
A diagnostic tool for supporting policymaking on urban resilience
Urban resilience has become a popular notion among urban policymakers and scientists, as a way to deal with the many complex issues that cities face. While it has positive connotations and resonates with local urban agendas, it is not always clear what it means and what factors contribute to resilience. Additionally, critical literature observes that people's views on what resilience means can differ strongly and the many choices that are made in…
How can NGOs support collective action among the users of rural drinking water systems? A case study of Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) systems in Bangladesh
New Strategies for Environmental Policy: Regional Network Management in the Netherlands
Flooding, River Management and Emergency Legislation Experiences of the accelerated reinforcement of dikes in the Netherlands
In early 1995 the Netherlands was faced with extremely high water levels on some of its major rivers. An emergency situation arose due to the threat of dikes being breached. As a result, during 1995 and 1996 the dikes along major rivers have been subjected to large‐scale reinforcement. So that this could be achieved, a special Act was brought into force to make possible a fast realisation of the operation. In spite of expeditious implementation, …
Restructuring the Dutch countryside: Limits of a governance strategy
Europe's rural areas are changing rapidly. In the Netherlands, where the competition for space is fierce, attempts are being made to manage such change. Several years ago, a large-scale project to
What makes strategic environmental assessment successful environmental assessment? The role of context in the contribution of SEA to decision-making
The expectations of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) regarding the integration of environmental and sustainability concerns into policy-making are high. Although evidence of its impact up to now is only indirect and, more important, appears to be modest, more attention has to be paid to the fact that the term ‘impact’ can be interpreted in different ways and to the importance of context in impact analysis. In this paper, we propose an ass…
The contribution of capacities and context to EIA system performance and effectiveness in developing countries: Towards a better understanding
EIA has the potential to contribute towards more sustainable development through well-informed decision-making.Evaluation studies conclude that this potential is utilised to a considerable extent in rich western democratic countries such as Canada and The Netherlands, but hardly in developing countries.EIA capacity development programmes have not been able to structurally change this situation in developing countries, where there is lack of insig…
Conversion to Organic Dairy Production in the Netherlands: Opportunities and Constraints
Organic agriculture is perceived as being more sustainable than conventional agriculture. However, while there is a growing interest in, and market for, organic products, large-scale conversion to organic agriculture is not taking place. Even though conversion from conventional to organic dairy production is not especially difficult in theory, conversion is slow in this specific sector. The conversion process to organic agriculture is often analy…
Uncertainty management strategies: Lessons from the regional implementation of the Water Framework Directive in the Netherlands
A meta‐level analysis of major trends in environmental health risk governance
Internationally but also within countries, large differences exist regarding how environmental health risks (EHRs) are governed. Despite these differences, at a meta‐level some general trends can be discerned that may point to a convergence of EHR governance regimes. One, EHR governance regimes are increasingly taking into account cost‐benefit considerations, sectoral goals outside the health risk domain, public concerns and stakeholder interests…
An analytical framework for capacity development in EIA — The case of Yemen
Towards a Conceptual Framework for The Study of Shifts in Modes of Environmental Governance – Experiences From The Netherlands
In the last decade, many authors have observed shifts from government to governance in the environmental policy domain. However, a clear conceptual framework to differentiate between modes of environmental governance is lacking and our understanding of when, how and why environmental governance changes from one mode to another is limited. In this paper we propose such a framework and we illustrate its usefulness by applying it to two environmenta…
The Effectiveness of Eia as an Instrument for Environmental Governance: Reflecting on 25 Years of Eia Practice in the Netherlands and the Uk
The European Union (EU) Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive which was introduced some 25 years ago has had a major impact on decision-making practices in EU member states. In the professional literature, this impact has mostly been discussed under the heading of "effectiveness", with an emphasis being given in particular to procedural elements. The extent to which EIA has contributed to objectives, such as raising environmental awaren…
Promoting system-level learning from project-level lessons
Governing Towards Sustainability—Conceptualizing Modes of Governance
There is a growing scientific debate regarding the suitability of certain modes of governance for promoting sustainable development (SD). However, thus far there is neither agreement on ways to meaningfully distinguish and understand governance modes nor a foundation of the aspects to be chosen for this endeavour. In order to overcome this conceptual vagueness, this paper presents a meta-framework for a sound conceptualization of governance modes…
An analysis framework for characterizing and explaining development of EIA legislation in developing countries—Illustrated for Georgia, Ghana and Yemen
A window on urban sustainability
Evaluating the substantive effectiveness of SEA: Towards a better understanding
Public participation in environmental impact assessment: Why, who and how
Environmental assessment in The Netherlands: Effectively governing environmental protection? A discourse analysis
Towards a Systematic Framework for the Analysis of Environmental Policy Integration
Environmental policy integration (EPI) refers to the incorporation of environmental concerns in non‐environmental policy sectors. EPI aims to avoid conflicts between environmental and other policy objectives and to enhance environmental policy by directly targeting the driving forces of environmental degradation. In practice, however, the potential of EPI has not been fully utilized. Scientific knowledge of EPI is found in several, largely isolat…
A user perspective on the gap between science and decision-making. Local administrators’ views on expert knowledge in urban planning
A method for the deliberate and deliberative selection of policy instrument mixes for climate change adaptation
Mees, H. L. P., J. Dijk, D. van Soest, P. P. J. Driessen, M. H. F. M. W. van Rijswick, and H. Runhaar. 2014. A method for the deliberate and deliberative selection of policy instrument mixes for climate change adaptation. Ecology and Society 19(2): 58. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06639-190258
Boundary organisations and their strategies: Three cases in the Wadden Sea
Scaling-up energy conservation initiatives: Barriers and local strategies
Advocating for Change? How a Civil Society-led Coalition Influences the Implementation of the Forest Rights Act in India
Steering urban environmental quality in a multi-level governance context. How can devolution be the solution to pollution
Political science (49 works) · Business (42 works) · Economics (42 works) · Geography (35 works) · Computer Science (33 works) · Environmental resource management (33 works) · Environmental planning (30 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Corporate governance (24 works) · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance (24 works)