Securitized or not? An analysis of the riskification and threatification of climate change adaptation in The Netherlands

Since climate change adaptation has risen on the political agenda of the EU, so has the tendency to securitize it. This seems apparent from the recently published EU mission statement on climate change adaptation. But what about securitization at the national level of EU member states? This paper aims to understand how and to what extent climate change adaptation has become securitized in national policy in The Netherlands. It does so by comparing the level of securitization for different adaptation issues, based on content analysis of 18 sectoral national policy documents and 6 in-depth interviews with national policy makers and experts. Manifestations of riskification and threatification - representing different levels of securitization - are analyzed with respect to the discourses used, and the actors and tools that are put forward to address the climate risk/threat. The results show that climate change has made Dutch flood risk governance even more prominent: it has been framed as a wake-up call to speed up the plans of the longstanding Delta program to protect The Netherlands against flooding. There is also a clear difference between the level of securitization for different adaptation issues. Where flood risk governance has become ‘securitized’, mainly in terms of tools such as a dedicated Act, Program, Fund and Commissioner, health related climate issues have not. Furthermore, most attention goes to adaptation in the built environment, while neglecting the social and health care domains and the need to take account of the characteristics and capabilities of at-risk citizen groups. We conclude that adaptation is both advocated and dealt with in a decentralized manner, as manifested in the collaborations of different public and private actors at different scales of governance and in different governance sectors. Nevertheless, some recent developments propagate the need for more centralized guidance from the national government.