Project
STURDI-Water: Designing Regional Water Banks for Resilience
STURDI-Water develops new ways to manage freshwater scarcity in the Dutch delta by designing regional water banks—institutions that fairly allocate water among competing users. The project addresses legal, ethical, technical, and governance challenges to implementing such systems. We build on international best practices to co-develop a practical, inclusive, and scalable approach with local stakeholders.
Background
Water shortages can cause major societal disruption. To enhance socio-hydrological resilience, it is imperative that regions start preparing for situations in which freshwater is insufficiently available to serve critical The Southwestern delta of the Netherlands faces increasing water stress due to climate change, with droughts and salinisation threatening freshwater supplies for agriculture, industry, nature, and households. Despite advances in water-saving and reuse technologies, freshwater shortages occur almost yearly. Traditional governance and regulatory systems are not equipped to manage these growing pressures across sectors.
This situation demands a new way of thinking about freshwater management—one that goes beyond technical solutions and addresses institutional, legal, and societal barriers. STURDI-Water responds to this need by proposing a transdisciplinary approach to developing regional "water banks": systems that match freshwater supply and demand in a fair, sustainable, and adaptable way.
Description
STURDI-Water is a collaborative research and innovation project designed to develop resilient freshwater systems for delta regions. The project is based in the Zeeland region but is intended to serve as a blueprint for freshwater governance both in the Netherlands and internationally.
The core of the Public Administration and Policy Group’s work on STURDI-Water is the institutional design of regional water banks. These banks are envisioned as governance systems that store and allocate freshwater—especially alternative sources like reused industrial water, desalinated brackish water, and subsurface-stored surplus water. The water bank acts as a central hub, coordinating water quality, quantity, and distribution among users with varying needs and priorities.
Our work in the Public Administration and Policy Group focuses on designing such water banks, looking to governance scholars such as Elinor Ostrom, and addresses key questions:
- How can water banks be designed in the Netherlands?
- What institutional features are needed to support water banking?
- How can governance be structured to ensure transparency, fairness, and efficiency?
- What ethical considerations (such as justice and health) must be taken into account?
- How do we align diverse stakeholder interests in a practical and legitimate way?
To inform our design, we are studying international water banks such as California’s Kern Water Bank and systems in Australia and Spain. These cases help us understand how water can be treated as a shared resource managed across sectors and jurisdictions.
