Abstract

One of the possible effects of climate change is an increased frequency of extreme rainfall events which, in cities, may lead to an overburdening of the public water system. An effective measure to protect urban areas against such overflow events is to increase the water storage capacity, such as by expanding the capacity for storing water underground. Additionally, urban areas should contain sufficient unsealed soil in the form of city parks, gardens, verges and other green spaces so that excess water can easily infiltrate the soil. Another advantage of public green areas is that they provide shadow and thereby have a cooling effect during periods of extreme heat, which is also an effect of climate change. However, the topic soil sealing does not appear in government-supported climate programmes aimed at making cities more resistant to the consequences of a changing climate. The cities themselves should therefore focus more explicitly on this issue. These are the outcomes of an inventory of the climate programmes of two large cities in the Netherlands carried out by the RIVM. In this inventory, the RIVM looked at which topics related to the soil (heat/cold storage, soil fertility and soil biodiversity, among others) were incorporated into the climate change programmes. Measures concerning to certain hard aspects of soil, such as heat/cold storage, underground use of space and water storage, have already been realized on a relatively large scale, with clearly visible benefits. The less concrete aspects, such as biodiversity and soil fertility (soil ecosystem services), have been implemented on a much smaller scale. It would appear that investing in soil fertility and other such soft aspects of soil is financially unattractive to stakeholders and that governments will have to stimulate investments in these areas.