And there you are:

It is easier to borrow money for champagne than for adaptation

For years I had been fascinated by one particular adaptation strategy: diversification. Wageningen UR granted me the opportunity to do my PhD on diversification as a strategy to adapt to climate related risk in managed river basins. My defence will be on the 25th of May 2010. You are very welcome.

What did I learn? I interpreted diversification as the combination of different land-use and water management activities within a region. Borrowing from economic theory, I found that, to make full use of the potential of such combinations of activities to reduce climate related risks, the performance of water and land-use management activities has to be studied over the total range of climatic conditions and across different spatial scales. This is different from the current practice where water management activities are typically tailored to perform under a specific design discharge or narrow range of extreme events. 

Although my research shows that diversification of land-use and water management can be a promising adaptation strategy to cope with climate risks, diversification turns out to be difficult to implement. Therefore, my work also examined constraints and opportunities for implementing water and land-use diversification. Two complementary frameworks that I found to be particularly useful in understanding these barriers and opportunities, were i) a recent conceptualisation of governance in terms of key governance principles and challenges (such as credibility, stability, inclusiveness, adaptiveness, legitimacy and allocation), and ii) transition literature that approaches major policy change from the perspective of individual actors and their strategies. I learned that water and land-use diversification is enhanced by pilot projects that test and debate new ideas through collaboration between recognised actors from civil society, policy and science. A challenge for the newly emergent coalitions of state actors and non-state actors is to move towards legitimate, accountable and adaptive governance. Another challenge is to create flexible and equitable financial instruments that facilitate benefit- and burden-sharing, social learning and that support a diverse set of potentially better-adapted new activities rather than compensate for climate impacts on existing activities. 

My research allowed me to study diversification, risk and water management. I am lucky to be able to continue this work in a new project on the integration of climate adaptation and water management, currently underway in the implementation of the Dutch Delta Program. An exciting program to explore long-term strategic decision to warrant water safety in the Netherlands and capitalise on opportunities that water offers. 2009 was the year of climate and Copenhagen, 2010 will be the year of biodiversity. Together with you, I hope we can forward the science of sustainability and adaptiveness, along with the diversity of managed river basins and -more in general- the diversity of the amazing world we live in.

...... links  for  you .....

invitation defence PhD | pictures | greenpeace | ambtenaren

....... mungo for you .......

Wie is mungo? mungo is de beschermheilige van Glasgow. In zijn tijd bekend als vertrouwenspersoon & onconventioneel raadgever. verder is mungo een stad in zambia (niet te verwarren met het nabije mongu), een plaats in papua nieuw guinea EN een national park in australie. daarbij was www.mungo.nl  een vrij domein & geeft 'mungo' geen vunzige hits. maar bovenal wordt mungo de naam waaronder ik projecten wil doen met leuke mensen, zoals jij. Daarvoor ben ik te bereiken als:  w e r n e r s @ m u n g o . n l [te gebruiken zonder de spaties. Door mijn email zo op internet te zetten probeer ik junk mail te beperken]