Utrecht Province (Netherlands)

Replicant City
Utrecht Province is advancing climate adaptation with a stronger focus on justice, especially in neighbourhoods affected by heat, flooding, and social inequality. Its interest lies in exchanging methods and tools to integrate vulnerability and fairness into policy and implementation.

The Province of Utrecht, with around 1.4 million inhabitants and 26 municipalities, is located at the heart of the Netherlands and brings together highly urbanised areas, historic centres, suburban territories and more rural landscapes. This diversity makes it a particularly valuable regional context for exploring how climate adaptation and social justice can be addressed across different scales and settlement types.

The province is relevant to JUST4CARE because it faces a combination of climate risks that affect different communities unevenly. These include heavy rainfall and flooding, as well as heat stress in paved and densely built neighbourhoods such as old city centres and pre-war districts with limited public space. As in Budapest, trade-offs between parking, greenery and liveability are especially visible in compact urban environments, while older people, people with small social networks and lower-income neighbourhoods are often less able to cope with climate impacts.

Utrecht Province’s participation is strongly aligned with the goals of just resilience. Climate adaptation is already a priority in its European and regional work, and the province has explicitly committed to integrating climate justice into its climate adaptation policy. Within JUST4CARE, it is interested in learning how a stronger social lens can be embedded in both projects and public policy.

More specifically, Utrecht Province is looking to exchange knowledge on indicators of vulnerability, mapping methods, participation with vulnerable groups, practical understandings of vulnerability, and the barriers and opportunities involved in implementing just climate adaptation in real territorial contexts.

“Vulnerable groups in our region, for example elderly people with a small social network, are more affected by climate risks during a heat wave or during a forest fire close to a nursing home.”

Detailed information:

The Province of Utrecht, with approximately 1.4 million inhabitants, is located in the heart of the Netherlands and brings 26 municipalities together. The region has a surface of 1.56 million km2 and includes a mix of highly urbanised areas, such as the city of Utrecht, Amersfoort, Veenendaal and Nieuwegein and more rural areas with towns, villages, rivers, floodplains and the historical Dutch Water Defence Lines (UNESCO world heritage).

The countryside in the west of the province is characterized by peat meadows (grassland) and arable farming, while in the east, the forest of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug National Park is located on top of high-lying areas with sandy soils. In our urban areas, there are several neighbourhoods that contain a small amount of greenery and/or have a lower socio-economic status, thereby making these neighbourhoods and their inhabitants more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Historic city centres and pre-war neighbourhoods (built before World War II) often have small streets, containing limited public space, which makes the greening of these neighbourhoods a challenge.  

 Specific Vulnerability Challenges

The Province of Utrecht struggles with multiple climate risks, for example, flooding caused by heavy rainfall and the Urban Heat Island effect in paved and highly urbanized neighbourhoods, such as old city centres and pre-war neighbourhoods. Just like the city of Budapest, the Province of Utrecht struggles with the conflicting interests between parking spaces and urban greening in neighbourhoods with limited public space. Additionally, vulnerable groups in the region, for example, elderly people with a small social network, are more affected by climate risks during a heat wave or during a forest fire close to a nursing home. Neighbourhoods with a lower socio-economic status are also more vulnerable to climate risks, as the capabilities of inhabitants to adapt are generally smaller.

Alignment with JUST4CARE

“In 2028, climate justice will be included in the province’s climate adaptation policy.”

Alignment with JUST4CARE

The Province of Utrecht is also a signatory of the EU Mission Charter on Adaptation to Climate Change and is aligned with the project’s just resilience objective. They aim to learn from the pilot and the replicant cities and exchange knowledge about implementing a social and just perspective on projects and policies. Specifically about:  

  • (Social) indicators of vulnerable groups and how to use them to map neighbourhoods that are vulnerable to climate change.
  • Methodological guidelines to organise participation with vulnerable groups.
  • Definitions and understandings of vulnerabilities and what this means in practice.
  • The map of needs, barriers and opportunities when implementing just climate adaptation initiatives.

Replication Objective

By exchanging knowledge with pilot and replicant cities and adapting JUST4CARE solutions, the Province of Utrecht aims to prevent the benefits and burdens of climate adaptation from being unevenly distributed between inhabitants and different regions and neighbourhoods within our province.