ARTICLES

Turning the tide 1. Embedding flood risk through intertemporal instruments in spatial planning law: a comparative analysis of Flanders, the Netherlands and Rhineland-Palatinate
BENJAMIN DEN BUTTER
FAIR Advocaten

The Hague This article examines how Flanders, the Netherlands and Rhineland-Palatinate address the mismatch between evolving flood-risk knowledge and existing spatial legal situations. It argues that the central issue is prospective intertemporal adjustment: how later risk knowledge is attached to land, buildings and development expectations formed under earlier assumptions. The comparison identifies three models: routinised Flemish intertemporality, permissive but fragmented Dutch intertemporality, and strong but threshold-based intertemporality in Rhineland Palatinate.

Administrative challenges in the restoration governance of Lake Urmia
PROFESSOR MASOUD FARYADI 
University of Mazandaran, Iran

A confluence of legal, economic, and social factors has contributed to the failure of various regulatory frameworks and programmes to achieve the restoration of Lake Urmia. From a legal standpoint, the most significant impediments have been specific institutional challenges and the monocentric governance model. This article, employing a descriptive, analytical, and legally oriented diagnostic methodology, examines the institutional challenges undermining the effectiveness of restoration efforts for Lake Urmia. It concludes that three primary categories of institutional challenges – the inadequacy of legal norms, administrative dysfunctions and deficiencies in executive instruments – have impeded the implementation of integrated polycentric governance in the lake’s restoration process. Identifying these challenges is imperative for reforming the legal framework governing wetland management and for strengthening the polycentric governance arrangements essential to the protection of endangered wetlands.

CASE COMMENTARY
The Nigerian Supreme Court decision in SC/CV/541/2025: Lagos State and others v Attorney-General of the Federation & National Inland Waterways Authority

CHARLES ADUAKA 
Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Nigeria
DR PAUL IKENNA UKAM HILDA OBI-OBIORA
Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria
At the heart of this dispute was a politically sensitive question: can the Nigerian Federal Government, through the National Inland Waterways Authority Act, exercise control over land adjoining navigable waterways for purposes unrelated to navigation? The Supreme Court’s ruling that declared sections 12 and 13 of the Act, allowing such control, to be unconstitutional is important in that it reflects an observable judicial movement towards re-examining the boundaries of Nigerian federalism.

STRATEGIC ISSUES – SCOTLAND
PROFESSOR SARAH HENDRY
Dundee Law School & the UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science, University of Dundee

NEWS – UK 111 Southern Water fined £7.1 million for sewage pollution