Speaker
Description
Belgium’s climate transition increasingly relies on subsurface use (geothermal energy, hydrogen and gas storage, CO₂ storage, nuclear-waste disposal), yet governance remains fragmented across federal, Flemish and local levels. Treating the subsurface as a common-pool resource, we apply the Institutional Resource Regimes (IRR) framework to assess institutional capacity and legal alignment in Flanders. A mixed, activity-centric design combines a top-down review of governing instruments with bottom-up evidence from 19 semi-structured interviews. For each use, we score extent (coverage of formal rules) and coherence (consistency within and across levels of governance) by comparing institutional arrangements with their activation in practice.
Findings indicate an overall complex regime: extent is low to moderate and coherence low to medium. Key drivers are split competences between federal and Flemish authorities, parallel economic and environmental permits, weak safeguards for interference, and ambiguous pore-space or access rights that sustain first-come-first-served dynamics and legal priority for earlier permits. Interviewees also report fragmented data sharing, limited early-stage participation at the policy (not only project) level, and “club” access to decision networks, raising accountability and liability concerns.
We propose a policy bridge toward sustainable-use and thus an integrated regime: joint Flemish–federal coordination with clear enforcement and liability allocation; an activity–instrument matrix that clarifies rights, responsibilities, and interference tests; harmonised licensing horizons plus a shared permitting and data-governance mandate; and minimum participation and transparency standards at the policy stage. These steps strengthen institutional capacity and democratic accountability while enabling climate-relevant subsurface uses without undermining local communities or intergenerational equity.
| If your abstract is not accepted for an oral presentation, would you be interested in presenting it as a poster instead? | No |
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| If accepted by the Scientific Board, I agree to have my presentation/poster and abstract published on the Belgian Climate Centre websites and social media. | Yes |
