Chapter 9 Climate Adaptation in Complex Governance Systems: Governance Systems between Inertia and Adaptability Arwin van Buuren, Sibout Nooteboom and Geert Teisman 1 Reference: Buuren, M.W. van, Nooteboom, S.G. & Teisman, G.R. (2012). Climate adaptation in complex governance systems. Governance systems between inertia and adaptability. In G. de Roo, J. Hillier & J. van Wezemael (Eds.), Complexity and Planning: Systems, Assemblages and Simulations (New directions in planning theory.) (pp. 221-242). London: Ashgate Publishing. If climate change will occur in line with expectations of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), some challenging problems have to be dealt with all over the world. Especially the deltas of our world are facing increased dangers of flooding. The Netherlands is one of the world’s most developed and densely populated delta areas. The Netherlands and many other deltas have a long tradition of flooding protection measures and accompanying measures against dropping of the ground level and related salt water intrusion in the peat meadow areas and for increasing water discharges in large rivers. Some climate experts argue that these ‘traditional’ measures no longer will be sufficient and perceive existing governments’ repertoire as inert: either the measures taken are not decisive enough, or they are only incremental improvements of existing measures which are no longer compatible with the challenges we face. If this is the case, the catastrophe theory, as one of the theories under the rubric of complexity theories, assumes that external tensions on the inert system will build up, even though this is neglected. At a certain moment, however, traditional responses no longer will work. A small variation in the weather system then can trigger unexpected system shocks leading to small or large catastrophes. What happened in the UK and along the Danube in the last 1 Arwin van Buuren and Sibout Nooteboom are both Associate Professor and Geert Teisman is Professor in Public Administration. All three are from the Department of Public Administration at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.