DAILY DELTA THURSDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER 2014 OPPORTUNITIES FOR PEOPLE, SCIENCE, CITIES AND BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
DELTAS IN TIMES OF CLIMATE CHANGE II
INTRODUCTION
THIS IS YOUR DAILY DELTA. A VISUAL AND INSPIRATIONAL MAGAZINE OF THE DELTAS IN TIMES OF CLIMATE CHANGE II
INDEX
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Opening Deltas in Times of Climate Change II
Community Based Adaptation The Round Table
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The economics of climate impact and adaptation, StĂŠphane Hallegatte
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International Climate Adaptation Business Challenge Rens de Jong
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Building with Nature
Creating resillient urban waterfronts Camiel van Drimmelen Peter van Veelen MSc Martijn Steenstra
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Fresh Water Management
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Creating Floating Cities Interview met Rutger de Graaf
Mainstreaming Flood Resilience and Green Infrastructure with Investment and Renewal Programs
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Disaster Reduction and Emergencies: Regional Perspectives
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Vietnam: Shared Framework for Development
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Learning from Flood Resilient Cities
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COMMUNITY BASED ADAPTATION
THE ROUND TABLE
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Big issues were discussed this morning at the Round Table ‘Community Based Adaptation’. Maarten Van Aalst (Director of the International Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, The Netherlands) just came back from New York where he attended the Climate Summit. He facilitated the Round Table that focused on the role of community based adaptation within the larger challenge of dealing with increasing climate risks in deltas.
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The panelists discussed the challenges currently faced by communities in deltas, and how they will be affected by climate change. What are the likely challenges and opportunities in promoting community based adaptation in deltas? Munish Kaushik representing Cordaid India, introduced the topic to the audience by outlining the situation in the Indian coastal village of Tandahar. This village is suffering from several climate problems, for example the salinity of agricultural land. He argued that we have to bridge multiple knowledge systems to come to a solution and that developmental planning and adaptation should be part of village development plans. Atiq Rahman of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, gave his scientific perspective on the raised questions. His advice to other scholars
and decision makers was to go to the affected areas and learn from the people who live there. Rahman: ‘Ecosystems and people are not two things. People are part of the ecosystem.’ Anju Sharma of the International Institute for Environment and Development in the United Kingdom stressed the necessity to understand what adaptation is all about. Sharma: ‘There is a preconception of how things have to be done, what is good and wrong. There is very little focus on the local level’. She suggested to adjust the terminology and to use the term community driven adaptation instead of community based adaptation. Yolanda Kakabadse, the International President of WWF, knew the importance of learning from local communities for adaptation. Kakabadse: ‘Local communities already adapted a lot to the changing circumstances. What we have to do is facilitate a dialogue between different communities.’ She also made clear that communities that are dealing with the effects of climate change are not only an issue in the South, but in the North as well. Panelist Michel Rentenaar, Netherlands Climate Envoy, made a statement on how to get the private sector on board to fund the climate budget. ‘We have to look at what is already happening in private sectors’, said Rentenaar.
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“We have to facilitate a dialogue between different communities.” YOLANDA KAKABADSE, THE INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT OF WWF
THE ECONOMICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS AND ADAPTATION STEPHANE HALLEGATTE, THE WORLD BANK, UNITED STATES
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Stéphane Hallegate kicked of his presentation with the latest results of the International Climate Change Summit in New York. He described it as a ‘nice milestone’. 74 countries and 1.000 businesses have declared that they will support carbon pricing in order to limit the world to a less than 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperature. He explained that this is a small step into the right direction, but with every announcement there is always someone complaining that it is not enough.
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Stéphane Hallegate then moved on to the actual presentation: economics of climate change impacts and adaptation in general and Mumbai in particular. Mumbai has been ravaged by floods. The impact and consequences of the floods are enormous. All kinds of diseases have the opportunity to manifest after the flood, but the economic damage is relatively limited, which has to do with the fact that poor people have little assets. The average citizen of Mumbai suffered a $200,- loss. Although this number looks relatively small, it is actually a year’s income and equals approximately their total savings. The challenge in this particular situation is not how to solve these flood problems, but to successfully implement the recommendations and solutions at hand. Eventually to ensure that the people of Mumbai will open up to adaptation to the effect of climate changes. This will not be an easy task to perform, as the measurement and prediction of the effects of climate changes are complex. Even when the effects are properly measured and predicted, how do we rate, review and eventually implement possible solutions and recommendations for adaptation? There are so many obstacles to overcome to create an optimal adaptation. For example, how much money is needed and how much money is available? The hard reality is that there is not enough money to create the optimal climate adaptation for countries and people. An additional factor is the poor communication of people in general about the present and future dangers and effects of climate changes.You need to frame the message positively in order to activate people. As in most cases: the lack of money is the problem. Adaptation is cost expensive and the majority of the politicians are only looking at GDP numbers. An optimal adaption will only increase GDP with 2%. But 2% of the world’s GDP is as much as the entire continent of Africa. Stéphane Hallegate states: “If you only look at GDP numbers, then you are looking in the wrong direction.” It is not about numbers, it is about people.
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International Climate Adaptation Business Challenge The International Climate Adaptation Business Challenge started with over 78 start-ups signing up for this contest. After a very thorough selection procedure, only seven promising startups made it to the final. In the final, all contestants had the opportunity to pitch their sustainable idea in relation to climate adaptation. At noon the winner was announced to the public: AQGRI+, founded by Priska Prasetya & Jelmer van Veen. AQGRI+ was absolutely thrilled that it won the first prize of €25.000. “We are super excited and as mentioned during our pitch: waste water is not the end of the road, it is just the beginning!” The jury loved their idea. “Their idea is not rocket science, but to turn waste water into three different products, namely: compost, fish and suitable water for agricultural purposes is absolutely brilliant! AQGRI+ was a clear winner for us and they absolutely deserve this prize.”
The finalists of the International Climate Adaptation Business Challenge
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Building with nature
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“One of the things we can use for the protection for coastal defense are ecosystem engineers, for designing oyster reefs and coral reefs.” BRENDA WALES, WAGENINGEN UR,THE NETHERLANDS
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TOM YSEBAERT, ROYAL NETHERLANDS INSTITUTE FOR SEA RESEARCH
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“One of the biggest challenges we face is how minimal interferences can be planned for maximal effect on ecological value.”
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Creating resillient urban waterfronts
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“Get all stakeholders together on a lower level, get on the same track and then scale up in order to gain influence on a more strategic level.” MSC PETER VAN VEELEN, CITY OF ROTTERDAM AND DELFT UNIVERSITY, THE NETHERLANDS
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ALEX NICKSON, GREATER LONDON AUTHORITY, UNITED KINGDOM
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“In London everything is so expensive, especially housing. This means that we need to keep the costs for building houses as low as possible. One of the results is that there is not a lot of money to invest in flood resilient houses.”
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Fresh water management
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“One of the biggest issues is that sea water has permeated the soil in many regions near the sea line in the Netherlands. This has affected the potable ground water.” MSC JOOST DELSMAN, DELTARES,THE NETHERLANDS
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CREATING FLOATING CITIES
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INTERVIEW WITH RUTGER DE GRAAF DELTASYNC, THE NETHERLANDS
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Dr. ir. Rutger de Graaf of Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences wants to inspire people to build floating cities. He is co-founder and director of Deltasync: water-based urban development in Delft. Today he gave a dynamic and interactive workshop. An interview. What can floating urbanisation offer to delta cities?
‘We did a study to see what the worldwide land shortage will be in 2050 and the results were striking. In 2050 we will have a shortage of 22 million square meters of land. Floating urbanisation can be a solution. I want to make clear that floating cities are not futuristic, it’s already happening today.’
What causes the problem?
‘Everyday a lot of people migrate to cities. Cities that grow fast are often coastal cities. These are the places that are vulnerable to climate change. We have an alternative to let cities grow without this risk of being flooded: building a floating city. Floating urbanisation offers us a lot of possibilities.’ Do you have examples of current floating urbanisation?
‘In Rotterdam the government and companies are implementing new forms of public-private-partnerships to create a floating neighbourhood. Also, there is a floating solar powered school in Nigeria and we are currently cooperating with the Philippines to realise a floating project in the delta city of Manila.’
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MAINSTREAMING FLOOD RESILIENCE AND GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE WITH INVESTMENT AND RENEWAL PROGRAMS
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Urban (re)development provides opportunities for adapting cities to become more flood resilient. Different representatives of cities gathered this afternoon at the Townhall room on the 23th floor of the WTC building in Rotterdam. They shared experiences and heard about what challenges cities face when they mainstream adaptation. They discussed best practices and challenges from vanguard cities across the globe.
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Beth McLachlan shared the goal of the city of Melbourne in Australia. The goal is to strategically transform the landscapes to respond to current challenges and a dramatically different climate and population. The mayor of Tainan City in Taiwan presented his ‘city of change’. Prof. Gin-Rong Liu, also from Taiwan, argued that we rely too much on the central government in times of climate change and that we have to concentrate more on local government and community based initiatives. Tan Nguan Sen of PUB talked about the challenges that Singapore is facing. The city suffers from very intense rainstorms. To fight this problem, the national water agency designed a holistic storm water management that is called the ABC Water Management Strategy. The water agency wants to encourage community ownership of Singapore’s water resources. Jan Rasmussen of the city of Copenhagen in Denmark presented the Cloudburst Management Plan. After the presentations the panel discussed the lessons learnt from the examples that were presented.
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Disaster reduction and emergencies: regional perspectives
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“Since 2012 we have a disaster management act in place to protect the people of Bangladesh, it looks like it’s working.” DR. MICHELLE LIM, CENTRE FOR WATER LAW, POLICY AND SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE, UNITED KINGDOM
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LEARNING FROM FLOOD RESILIENT CITIES
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At first sight, urban design and climate adaptation seem to be contradictory. The Dutch Water Program: Room for the River, wants to show that it does not have to be that way. They claim that by combining the two, new opportunities can occur. At today’s workshop in Diamond Room l, the goal was to gain a new sense of thinking in technical adaptation strategies and urban design.
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Jan van der Grift of Room for the River, mentioned in his introduction that rising the dykes does not work anymore in the Netherlands, the rivers need more space. To illustrate his statement, Mathieu Schouten, senior landscape architect, presented the Room for the River project in Nijmegen. Schouten: ‘Nijmegen embraces the river’. The project in Nijmegen and the Zollhafen project in Mainz adapted a new way of acting. From fighting against water, towards living and working with water. Schouten explained that the success of the project in Nijmegen is due to the dual focus and the cooperation of national and local governments. Heinrich Webler showed the audience a short film of the project. Although the approaches of the two projects are different, both of them show that water safety measures and a quest for spatial quality can reinforce one another. After the presentations the participants of the workshop discussed several statements and were challenged to think about transforming problems into opportunities.
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“Rising the dykes does not work anymore in the Netherlands, the rivers need more space.” JAN VAN DER GRIFT, ROOM FOR THE RIVER
Bosch Slabbers Landscape + Urban Design
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Vietnam: shared framework for development
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DR.TRAN HONG THAI, MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, VIETNAM
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“The delta plan is agreed by our neighbour countries, but we are now experiencing difficulties on how to implement the delta plan.”
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“The Mekong Delta is on deltas in regards to clima most important food reso VICTORIA KWAKWA,THE WORLD BANK, VIETNAM
ne of the top 5 threatened ate change, but also one of the ources.�
Bosch Slabbers Landscape + Urban Design
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LCCP @ClimateLondon
Marlies Batterink @Battertweet
SOCIAL MEDIA
Stéphane Hallegatte of the World Bank: “it has been a good week for climate policy” #climatedelta14
Winner of climate adaptation business challenge @ Agriplus: waste water is just the start! Congratulations! #climatedelta14
Annisaat @annisaaaty
Sabina Voogd @Truesabina
David van Raalten @DRaalten
#climatedelta14 Just followed a mesmerizing presentation about the idea of making a floating city, who knows that it will be our future!
Had useful and #fun conversations with fellow congress visitors in the #aquarium yesterday #fishtalk #climatedelta14
Great to be at #climatedelta14: welcome at #arcadis -> find us at booth 6!
Keighley McFarland @KeighleyMcF
Kian Goh @kiangoh
Stefan Nijwening @stefanijwening
#climatedelta14 is putting out a daily update magazine on conference activities. I am totally floored by this format!
“Adaptation is about development” Stéphane Hallegatte makes World Bank’s position on climate change clear. @climatedelta #climatedelta14
Stefan Kuks en Vice-Minister Lai sluiten een boeiende sessie over Mekong Delta Plan af #climatedelta14
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Researchers presenting their posters.
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COLOPHON
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Publication Organising Committee Deltas in Times of Climate Change II Text Visuele Notulen in cooperation with the Organising Committee Deltas in Times of Climate Change II Editing Organising Committee Deltas in Times of Climate Change II Photography Visuele Notulen Organising Committee Deltas in Times of Climate Change II City of Rotterdam Rogier Bos Anneke Hymmen Bosch Slabbers Graphic design Visuele Notulen
Facebook ClimateNL-KennisVoorKlimaat Twitter @ClimateDelta LinkedIN DeltasinTimesOfClimateChange
www.climatedeltaconference 2014. org
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