From implementation towards maintenance: sustaining collaborative initiatives for integrated floodplain management in the Netherlands

Collaborative governance has been introduced in the planning and implementation phases of river management, but has not yet reached the maintenance phase. In anticipation of this, this article explores how stakeholders shape collaborative initiatives aimed at maintaining multifunctional floodplains by analyzing their framing of collaboration objectives and membership structures. The case study shows that participants envisioned a shared governance structure, while no consensus was attained on the underlying collaborative objectives. Moreover, the envisioned structure revealed a tendency towards separation instead of integration, because participants abandoned the idea of public–private collaboration, which had previously been adopted in the planning and implementation phases.