Tidal river management in East and West.

Problems in tidal rivers such as the Hari-Mukteswari and Kobadak river in Bangladesh are much related to 1) water and 2) sediment. If we look carefully at the Dutch and Belgian delta , we can find water and sediment also as a major cause of trouble in tidal rivers. The Westerscheldt, the Eems and other water bodies under tidal influence (such as the seaport of Oostende) need to be carefully managed in order to prevent problems caused by an accumulation of sediment. Often, this involves dredging.

If problems in the two countries show similarities, can the solutions be similar as well? In Oostende, a very large tidal basin is constructed in order to keep the harbor free of sediment (picture 1). In Paal (Zeeuwsch Vlaanderen), a small tidal basin (“Spuikom” in Dutch) keeps the harbor of Watersport Vereniging Saefthinghe open by flushing it twice daily (picture 2).

Can strategically placed tidal basins be used in other tidal rivers in the Netherlands to influence the rate and location of sedimentation? Could tidal basins form an alternative solution to the siltation problems in the tidal river of the Eems, instead of creating an artificial island (picture 3) and continued dredging? Or are the two countries and the rivers not comparable?

Picture 1: a large spuikom in Oostende that fills up during high tide, and flushes the harbor during low tide.

Picture 2: a "spuikom" in action in Paal (Zeeuwsch Vlaanderen), used to help keep the harbor free of sediment.

Picture 3: newspaper article describing the plans to build an artificial island to help the river Eems. 

Full article: trouw.nl/tr/nl/4332/Groen/article/detail/3366142/2012/12/20/Nieuw-Waddeneiland-moet-natuur-in-de-Eems-redden.dhtml

Another Man's World

Just another day,
In another man’s world,
Not mine...

With 2012 coming to an end I want to look into the rear view mirror just a little bit. A little looking back on what I’ve done over this last year? Going through my notebook it seems that it has been a lively year. I’ve presented my research ideas at various occasions, at the IVM/VU University, at an ICCWaDS workshop at ZEF in Bonn, at the Water@Leeds group, to Ken Oye (MIT), to WUR-ILW students, at the Bangladesh stakeholder workshop in Dhaka and of course meetings with the WOTRO project team. Eventually this has resulted in a finished research proposal that I’ve submitted to the WASS research school. In all this has been a very inspiring period in which I’ve navigated across many epistemological positions. Though this is a wearing, confusing and in the eyes of some utterly useless (I still don’t agree) process, this eventually resulted in a approach for my research that I think is quite useful (and very exciting!). The two main sources of inspiration are Paul Feyerabend’s notion of Abundance and the idea of Ontological Politics (see e.g. the work by Annemarie Mol and John Law). If you are interested in reading my proposal, please let me know and I’ll send it to you. I cannot put it online because some parts of it are currently under review.
After the summer holidays I shifted my attention from thinking about doing research to doing actual research (about thinking). This has resulted in two papers which will hopefully be published next year. The first paper is a further deepening and elaboration of earlier work that I’ve done on the Philipsdam in the Netherlands. The second paper, which I was able to present at a very inspiring workshop in Lisbon, deals with the nature of Climate Change as an actor in Dutch Delta management. At the moment I have started two new case studies, one in collaboration with the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency on the future of the Dutch south-western Delta and the other on histories and trends in Bangladeshi Delta management.

Before shutting down my computer for this year I want to misuse this blog for thanking just a few of the people that contributed to making the past year such an exciting year. Why should I wait with thanking people until I can write the acknowledgements in my thesis? Thank you Flip and Arthur for your ever inspiring support. Margreet, thank you for making time to listen to my stream of consciousness. Bert for the many reflexive lunch walks. The WOTRO-team, IWE PhD discussion group (let’s revive this initiative!) and the Science and Values cluster at the IVM-VU for lovely discussions.

I am truly looking forward in continuing this wonderful journey called a Phd in 2013!

Merry Christmas to all!

Arjen

For all those interested in the multiple ontologies, multiple realities stuff, and for those of you interested in obscure Scottish pop-music, check out the song Another Man’s World by a band called Immaculate Fools.

Three sides of the delta

The last two weeks the research team enjoyed an excellent time in Bangladesh. I’d like to share with you some personal impressions and lessons learned from the trip.

The workshop on the 2nd of December confirmed the interest in and opportunities for research on greener flood management solutions and strategies, from a Bangladesh perspective. Especially in the parallel discussion it showed that this would fill a gap between water related research versus more environmental related research. On the other hand, it also became clear that the terminology needs some tuning: despite attempt to define ‘green flood management’ it was still understood in multiple ways; as in green economy (solutions contributing to sustainable economic growth), green growth (measure to ensure higher agricultural production to feed the country), to considering the environmental impacts of planned flood infrastructures. So, my first task is to re-check terminology and possible alternative formulations of the research theme.

The second part of the trip involved field visits to the Jessore-Khulna region. It was great to have an impression of the delta, which reminded me also about my work in Vietnam some years ago. Very remarkable to see (nearly) the same practices, rice and fish production, similar kind of houses, and the general 'delta looks'. We visited some of the beels in which Tidal River Management is on-going, took place or is planned. TRM is a nice example of ecosystem-based flood management, as the practice departs from the dynamics in the river and broader ecosystem functioning simultaneously. Especially the social dimension of TRM is interesting: people developing, hijacking, promoting, opposing the concept. I also enjoyed the discussions with Mahmouda, Farhana and Arjen on our individual research plans and shared interests. We also had a intensive session in which we developed an outline for a joint paper.

To conclude this short story, for me the trip ‘joined’ the three sides of the delta: the Netherlands, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

 

Complexity as understatement

Today is Hartal day. For those of you who are not familiar with this bizarre phenomenon, a hartal is a strike which immobilizes an entire country. If you ignore a hartal, or if you accidently end up at the wrong place at the wrong time you can face brutal violence (last Sunday 3 people lost their lives). Since my arrival to Bangladesh, two and a half weeks ago, this is now the third (!) hartal. Today is thus the third day in which we cannot go into the field, and interviews have been cancelled (these days turned out to be very effective for doing work on our joint paper).

Having packed my bag for tonight’s flight I have now some time to reflect upon the last two weeks.One of the things that, apart from the insane hartals, has struck me over the last two weeks is the incredible sensitivity and dynamics of the Delta. When looking at the past, as I’ve tried to do in the Dhaka workshop, but also when looking at the current state of affairs in the South West delta, as we’ve done in the Khulna trip, it became more and more clear that in this Delta physically and socially only a small thing is needed for a systemic change. Physically this clearly visible in the (literally) meters of sediments that are deposited in river beds and tidal basins. Socially this is for example shown by the incident last June in which members of parliament visiting the area where attacked and their cars being set on fire.

In all this trip was very interesting, intensive, fruitful but also a bit bewildering. In the field I work in, people write about beautiful terms like wickedness, complexity and resilience. My feeling after this trip is that for Bangladesh complexity is an understatement...

Turning Tides? The Dhaka workshop

Sunday 2 december the Institute of Water and Flood Management of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in Dhaka, hosted the first Delta Lessons seminar of our research programme. This turned out to be a very interesting day. After a warm welcome by our host dr. Munsur Rahman  project leaders Shah Alam Khan and Flip Wester started the day with an introduction titled: "Turning Tides".

Flip Wester "Turning Tides?" from arjenzegwaard

After this intruduction the 4 Phd's presented very briefly their research proposals and first results of their studies:

Farhana Ahmed: "Learning from our futures"

Farhana Ahmed "Learning from our futures" from arjenzegwaard

Martijn van Staveren: "Feeling Blue? Get Green"

Martijn van Staveren "Feeling blue get green" from arjenzegwaard

Mahmuda Mutahara: "Towards preaching what is practiced?"

Mahmuda Mutahara "towards preachin what is practiced?" from arjenzegwaard

Arjen Zegwaard: "Can we know a delta?"

Arjen Zegwaard "Can we know a Delta?" from arjenzegwaard

In the afternoon two presentation where done on water management practices in the South West Delta of Bangladesh, one by the programme's external advisor Hamidul Huq and on by two MSc student from Wageningen.

Hamidul Huq Ïnto the Beel"

Hamidul Huq "Into the beel" from arjenzegwaard

Leendert de Die en Jan van Minnen on Tidal River Management:

Leendert de Die and Jan van Minnen "TRM" from arjenzegwaard

After the series of presentation the group was divided over 4 sub-group to discuss the concent and ideas with the four individual PhD students.

Dhakaworkshop program

As promised: the 2 December workshop program can be found here.

Workshop will be hosted at the IWFM/BUET.

More info? Email arjen [dot] zegwaard [at] wur [dot] nl

See you in Dhaka! We've heard rumours that there might be real 'pepernoten' at the workshop!

Meanwhile: Conferences and workshops

After the Deltanet conference in Ghent it was time for the Dutch 3rd National Delta Conference. Just to get the picture: imagine 1700 water professionals in a large convention  centre (Ahoy Rotterdam). The conference, organised by Wim Kuijken, the Dutch special commissioner for the delta. At the conference the state of affairs concerning the national delta programme is presented in plenary sessions and a 'delta parade'. One of the highlight for me was the panel discussion with Louise Fresco on sustainability and economy.

Though it also made me feel somewhat uncomfortable to be in the middle of a self-assuring show for the third year in a row, it did show the serious (and fruitful) effort that is being put into establishing this delta programme and the broad constituency this programme has in the Dutch professional water domain. Maarten Hajer (PBL) as wrap up speaker jokingly hinted in his closing speech that it is interesting in what shape next year’s conference will have (combining it with a pop-concert), given the growth rate of the past three years. This year the central theme was the question how civil society could be included in the process, in order to establish societal interest in the measures that the delta programme will propose in the coming years. It's might be a bit late in the process, but we'll see how this develops (and how ordinary men will be represented on next years' delta show!).

The week after the Delta Conference I went to the workshop ‘Workshop on Uncertainty and Climate Change Adaptation’, organised by the CIRCLE-2 project in Lisbon. At this workshop I presented my paper (co-authored by Arthur Petersen and Flip Wester) called ‘Engaging abundance in the Dutch delta: Climate Change and Ontological Politics’. Here you can find my prezi, the article will follow later, since it might be part of some special issue, somewhere. The workshop was extremely well organised and very interesting. In two day, in six sessions papers were discussed, all dealing with uncertainties and climate change adaptation (obviously), with a wide variety of approaches (meteorology, sociology, political sciences, economics, etc). Apart from the workshop content, and the wonderful and vibrant city of Lisbon, it was also very nice to learn about other perspectives on what’s happening at the science-policy interface in climate change adaptation. Check for example the video here on the serious game called ‘Sustainable delta’ in which you can ‘Experience the Future’. Check also the article with the wonderful title ‘the History of Futures’.

After all these organised event it is time to take up the gauntlet and organise our own workshop. On 2 December we will organise a workshop at the Institute for Water and Flood Management at BUET titled ‘Turning Tides?’. If you are around in Dhaka at that time and interested in participating, send an email to arjen[dot]zegwaard[at]wur[dot]nl. More info, including program will follow!

UPDATE Talking Climate Change and Uncertainties: today a report was published stating that our (NL's) policies do not cover all Climate Change risks.
 

Deltanet conference in Ghent

Last Monday, Dynamic Deltas team members Jeroen Warner, Arjen Zegwaard and myself joined the Deltanet international conference on interregional cooperation between European deltas. Deltanet is an EU-funded programme to stimulate knowledge exchange between deltas in Spain/Portugal, Belgium/the Netherlands, UK, Romania, Germany and Poland.

It was quite nice to hear, for example, stories about the Schelde from the Belgian perspective. Usually Dutch people (with myself as a now outdated example...) tend to think about the Southwestern Delta only in terms of Dutch issues: 1953 flood, Hedwigepolder, nature development/coastal protection, water quality issues in the Volkerrak, sedimentation issues, salt water intrusion. But ofcourse also across the border, many issues are going on and plans are being developed to deal with them. See for example the Belgian Sigma plan. This needs international collaboration in order to work according to an integrated approach.

Next to that I could (re-)establish links with persons working in the Danube delta, the Ebro delta, and the Minho delta. So far, the programme will end March next year but the consortium partners are now thinking and working on applying for a next phase.

Ofcourse a visit to Ghent could not be limited to just going and coming back the same day (which is in logistical terms almost impossible). So we went already on Sunday afternoon, enjoyed a Ghent stoofvlees dish with Belgian beer (picture by Arjen) and slept in an old monastry, to complete the 'total experience'.

Dreams

“Rahman dreamed of the reclamation of kilometers of fertile land from the sea. He dreamed that the Ganges Delta would be never be hit by those terrible floods. That Bangladesh’s golden people would forever be safe behind high dikes. Dikes, delta, land reclamation from sea: the Netherlands! It was a dream with a logical consequence. Only one country in the world was able to help Rahman with his vision: the Netherlands!”(source: Springer, 1990; translated from Dutch)

The above was written by the first ambassador of the Netherlands in Bangladesh after a conversation with Bangladesh’ first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in 1972. Many interventions later, including the famous Flood Action plan that was the result of deadly floods of the late 1980s, one has to conclude that perhaps, PERHAPS, there is a tiny chance that Rahman’s “dream” should not be taken too seriously.

In fact, I’m quite sure it should not, because it is 1) not realistic and 2) can even have negative consequences for some areas in Bangladesh.

First, is it realistic to believe that it is possible to control all the forces of nature that are exerted on the immensely dynamic delta of Bangladesh? The Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna are among the largest rivers in the world, continuously eroding and creating land. Actually: the net sedimentation that is deposited by these rivers have made Bangladesh; have risen the country out of the ocean.

Second, floods are essential to keeping Bangladesh alive. Not only are seasonal floods essential for irrigation and fertilization, controlled flooding can also keep existing river systems alive.

In the southwest delta of Bangladesh, where tidal rivers are rapidly sedimenting up, the creation of tidal basins (depoldering) helps keep river systems alive by 1) keeping river flow relatively high and 2) by redirecting the sediment deposition from the river to the areas that are temporarily inundated. This, in a nutshell, is called “Tidal River Management”.

So, should Bangladesh battle water and build enormous dikes, dredge and poor concrete? Perhaps in some urban areas this might be helpful, but overall this is not be the right mindset to tackle water related problems.

In the southwest delta, it is all about the management of water and silt. The false belief of many people (mainly engineers and dredgers) that water can be controlled with concrete and pumps and big dredgers should be taken into serious consideration.

In his book Can Bangladesh be protected from floods?, Hugh Brammer concludes that Bangladesh cannot be, and it most probably will never be. And it shouldn’t be, because floods are Bangladesh. It has created this country and, with good management, will also ensure its survival in the future.

NL MoFA move to invest more in waterrelated DRR

The department of Humanitarian Relief of the Foreign Affairs Ministry recently formulated a concrete ambition in the field of Disaster Risk Reduction: in accordance with international agreements, 10% of the humanitarian relief assistance should be invested in DRR (see doc, in Dutch). The rationale is to invest beforehand in the reduction of risks, instead of only responding to a crisis. This is an interesting, and fruitful, development.

I was happy to be invited by the ministry for a meeting yesterday to informally discuss and brainstorm about the approach and options to invest disaster risk reduction activities in water management. I could not resist to translate this into possible activities in the field of flood risk management in deltas ;p. Participants liked the ideas and to name a specific outcome, it was recommended to develop 10 long term Delta Visions for at least 10 world deltas, to advise on integrated holistic approaches and flood risk management activities, supported by Dutch know-how and expertise. Also we discussed about options for urbanized delta areas, for example in the field of water and sanitation.

Participants included representatives from DME (the ‘water’ department), DSH (stability and humanitarian relief), the Red Cross and the Red Cross Climate Center, Deltares, and the Delta Commissioner’s staff and we are likely to get together again the coming months.

Nuance?

Website Dutch newspaper 'de Telegraaf':

Drinking water shortage threat

Website Dutch newspaper 'NRC':

RIVM (national institute for public health and the environment) is worried about our drinking water in case of extreme drought.

Here's the original report, a little bit more specific, called "Effects of climate change on water quality at drinking water abstraction points : Analysis of concentrations of substances"

Weekly world flood update

This week I came across numerous news items, reporting floods occurring everywhere around the world... No wonder that the Proventium Consortium has a specific newsletter specifically concerning floods (you have to register first and then click the newsletter topics of your choice)!
 
Oxfam reports floods in Niger, affecting more than half a million people and causing 80 casualties. The floods are due to heavy rains and have caused a lot of damage to especially the agricultural sector. Food prices are expected to rise sharply in the coming months.
 
In Cameroon, heavy rains caused the breach of a large water reservoir, which surprised the North Eastern parts of the country (and also parts of Nigeria). Also in this case, huge secondary flood impacts are expected, especially in the field of health – cholera, malaria, and other infectious water related diseases.
 
More than a million people are displaced in the North Eastern part of India (bordering Bangladesh, where downstream flood waters are also expected). Next to reports of casualties and damage to properties, also the National Park has been affected (photo Indian Times).

Tidal River Management in Bangladesh - part I

Until December 2012, Jan van Minnen and I will perform MSc thesis research in Dhaka and Khulna, Bangladesh. Fundamentally, our goal is to find if and how Tidal River Management can contribute to relieving problems related to drainage congestion in the Southwest Delta.

In the 1950s, polders were constructed in the tidal southwest delta of Bangladesh to decrease flood vulnerability, increase food production and to promote socio-economic development of the area. Old floodplains were transformed into polders and became highly productive agricultural areas. However, river sedimentation started to occur and as of the 1980s drainage congestion started to occur. This led to widespread socio-economic problems and the loss of livelihoods.

In 1990, farmers at Beel (polder) Dakatia cut the embankment of their polder in order to increase drainage congestion. This strategy has been named Tidal River Management afterwards, and is based on increasing tidal prism (the volume of water entering and leaving the delta between high and low tide) to increasing river flow, which results in the transport of sediment from the river to the polder.

The ultimate question is whether Tidal River Management can be regarded a sustainable strategy to decrease the problems related to drainage congestion in the SW delta. Can Tidal River Management increase flood resilience and contribute to socio-economic development of the impoverished southwest delta of Bangladesh?

To be continued soon…!

Abstraction versus the Richness of Being?

After quite a while of struggling with the abundance of theories, questions and concepts, I finally submitted my proposal to my research school. A true relief, but it also poses a brand new question: what am I going to do?

Again, as it turns out, the possibilities are abundant. After some random exploring and discussions with fellow PhD candidates I’ve now come up with the idea of using mental maps (or cognitive maps, or concept maps, or whatever you want to call them). Mental maps can be used for many different types of research, and so far I’ve come across literature varying from exercises that try to map how people (children appear to particularly interesting for this) perceive cities, or the use of mental maps to figure out the functioning of brains. This last strand of mental map use made me think of this Muse song:

I’m not quite sure what this means about the functioning of my brain though… I’m not going to use mental maps in my interviews for doing psychological studies or neuro-focussed cognitive studies. I’m going to use these maps as a tool to figure out how, to speak with Feyerabend, people make abstractions of the richness that surround them. Some call this richness complexity, or wickedness, or even super-wickedness, other argue, and I agree, we should stop using the wicked word alltogether:

“So let’s also agree to stop using the term “wicked problems”. If everything becomes “wicked” or “super-wicked”, then everyone will just give up. We need to work at our democracy, to encourage bright young people – in research and in government – to be filled with enthusiasm for spending their lives working on the big difficult problems of the time”. 

Prep or drown?

Yesterday I read about an upcoming programme at Discovery Channel: Doomsday Preppers. It’s about people that fear the worst and also prepare (prep) to the extreme for that: living in houses with shipping containers as a core, piling up huge amounts of foods and water, being self-reliable in terms of electricity, military drills for self-protection...

It’s interesting to think about how the people featuring in the documentary see risks of possible (but to them, certain) disasters. They are sure that something will happen, even if they don’t know when exactly the volcano eruption or financial crisis will hit. That’s a solid enough basis to entirely design and live their lives, prepared for the worst. The lesson is that too much risk awareness is also not such a good thing - and that not only extreme carelessness (‘I can’t believe you live in a flood plain/under sea level’) but also extreme preparedness exist.

Does it not come to mind, that if preppers are the only (few) ones so well prepared and with lots of resources, it is also most likely that other, less prepared people, will eventually find them and won’t knock on the door friendly, to ask for a cup of soup? Don’t try to survive by yourself, but try to survive with your community!

I’m going to check out at least one episode – for those of you more interested in movies on similar themes, The Road is a good choice!

Cogito Ergo Sun

This week I had a email conversation with Jeroen Warner, one of the senior researchers in our project, about Descartes’ iconic “Cogito Ergo Sum” in relation to the idea/possibility of full (flood) control. Marcel Metze, in his pageturner ‘Veranderend Getij: Rijkswaterstaat in Crisis’ (Changing Tide: Rijkswaterstaat in a Crisis), shows how  ‘control’ (In Dutch: beheersen) is a core keyword in Rijkswaterstaats organisational culture (see page 204).

Today Jeroen pointed me at the name of the Wageningen based solar-studio: ErgoSun. This made me wonder wether this is referring to “I sun, therefore I am” or “I am, therefor I sun”. Eitherway, if we can controll the sunshine, we might aswell controll the waters around us: Cogito Ergo Sun!

Meeting the international risk and disaster management community @ IDRC 2012 in Davos

The two-yearly International Disaster and Risk Conference (IDRC) 2012 was hosted in Davos, Switzerland and to my surprise I was the only representative of Disaster Studies (and Wageningen UR as well). Quite a challenging task! Although the main reason for participating was the opportunity to do a poster presentation on my previous and future work on flood risk management, I also worked as a volunteer for the organization, the Global Risk Forum. This means I had to act as a ‘host’ for conference visitors and support sessions, for example with reporting and session management. A perfect way to combine attendance with helping out the organization, who funded most part of my stay in return.

IDRC is ‘the place to be’ to meet with the international community working in the field of risk and disaster management. The volunteering work gave me numerous opportunities to get in touch with several representatives of institutes that are potential supporters or even partners of my research plans. The PEDRR is a very interesting network, but I could also establish contact with the UN-ISDR, IFRC, FAO and UNDP who are all active, each from their own perspective, in the field of flood risk management. They work in the Bangladesh and Vietnamese deltas and I was already invited to visit some of their running projects there. I got quite a number of enthusiastic reactions on my research plans.

Sessions I participated in were titled ‘Environment and Disaster Risk Reduction: from theory to practice (hosted by PEDRR)’, ‘Integrative risk management’, ‘Mobilising the creation of a risk culture’, ‘Risk, society and culture’, ‘Disasters, environment and migration (with Anthony Oliver-Smith and Jörn Birkmann as panellists)’, ‘Flood Risks’ and ‘Ecosystem based approaches’ (both poster presentations). In later blogs in will zoom in on interesting details of some of them. A last worthy remark on Elsevier’s launchof a new, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

Both in terms of content and ideas, and getting in touch with interested individuals and potential partners for research collaboration of support, the visit was quite successful. I'd recommend to go again in two years time as a group trip!

Visit Waterloopbos

Yesterday a delegation of the Irrigation and Water Engineering group went to the Waterloopbos. This forest used to be location for hydraulic test with scale models. The models have been abandoned for quite some time now, and nature is slowly taking over. At the moment an art project called ‘Drift’ has placed all sorts of artworks in the forest. A wonderful mix of surreal art, engineering nostalgia and large spiders. 

Waterloopbos

If you are ever visiting the Noordoostpolder, for whatever reason, do pay this forest a visit!

UPDATE: For more pics, made by Patricio Mena Vásconez, click here.

Wavemachines, photo (c) PMV 2012

Risky Uncertainty?

Last Friday I was asked to give a presentation at the Studium Generale session as a part of the Wageningen Annual Introduction Days. It was really challenging to keep a group of 90, just arrived, international students interested in flood risks and uncertainties, since we were competing with a very sunny friday afternoon freshly and the prospect of free drinks. Despite these boundary conditions, it was a very interesting and lively afternoon.

My short talk was about the question: What do past events and statistics tells us about the future? Venue of this session was the new meeting place at the campus called Impulse, really beautiful and more striking here at Wageningen University: excellent coffee!

Turmoil with regard to Bangladesh climate funds investments

Bangladesh, being one of the world’s most vulnerable deltas with regards to sea level rise and climate change, has been positioning itself as a ‘climate victim’. At the same time it also takes a pro-active role in investing in climate change adaptation and on his own has established the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund (BCCTF) of more than $ 300 million. Next to that, the international community (notably DFID, USAID and the European Commission) have established the Bangladesh Climate Change Resilient Fund (BCCRF) of about $ 170 million. The latter funds is management by the Worldbank.

From the beginning there has been quite a lot of discussion as to how to invest the national BCCTF (in which projects or activities, but also via which channels). Lately, tensions rose as earlier promises from the Bangladeshi government, to distribute the funds via existing NGO’s, is being delayed. It led to a massive protest from the NGO community in Bangladesh.

At the same time, the first stand-alone project from the BCCRF funds has been signed recently and will invest $ 12.5 million in building climate resilient communities. We expect a phone call soon!

The agency of fish

Just found a lovely documentary on the decision to put the Haringvliet dam on a crack, then to cancel this decision, then to cancel the decision-to cancel this decision. The documentary is made by the local television station of the island Goeree Overflakkee (and unfortunately, but logically in Dutch). The most striking element of the documentary to me is the way in how the various interviewees are formulating how fishes, in this case mainly salmon, think. One person thinks the fish are afraid of the noise in the Rotterdam harbour, another is expressing what fishes think when they are swimming through a lock. 

It would be way to easy to suggest a resemblance between politicians making/cancelling decisions and the 3 second memory of fishes (though the Mythbusters claim this is false). This does make an interesting case for studying the agency of non-humans and principle of generalized symmetry.

The origin of... the Dutch Delta

Before I went on holidays in July, I worked on my research proposal, in order to submit it for the (lets hope) approval of my research school WASS. In preparatory discussions with my supervisors there was one recurring questions: What is a Delta? Is it an idea? A hydrological  unit? A geographical space? Where/when does it start or end?

When I returned to office from my holidays I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this august the Social Studies of Science journal published a special issue on water, with contributions from a.o. Wiebe Bijker on Water Cultures. Totally fascinating to read the introductory article 'Water Worlds' by Jessica Barnes and Samer Alatout. Similar to what I intend to do in my research, the authors translate the fascinating 'Body Multiple' (2002) by Dutch philosopher/anthropologist Annemarie Mol to the domain of water studies. Annemarie Mol who also this summer received the prestigious Dutch Spinoza prize.

Going through this special issue I had to think of this special issue of Technology & Culture focused entirely on the Dutch water management, technologies and politics, which was published 10 years ago (2002). In this special issue there was also a contribution by Wiebe Bijkers: The Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier: A Test Case for Dutch Water Technology, Management, and Politics. 

The two contributions by Wiebe Bijker to both these excellent special issues to me shows that apparently the Dutch Delta starts in Maastricht!

Welcome

Welcome to this blog! Via this blog we will keep you informed on the whereabouts of the 4 PhD candidates that are working on the project 'Communities and Institutions for Flood Resilience'. On this blog we publish posts about the research we are conducting, conferences we (intend to) visit, courses we do, etc. Basically all things and thoughts that we come across and find worthwile sharing with the world. Also we will invite MSc and BSc students, while doing their internships or thesis researches, and our supervisors to write guest post on this blog.

And of course: suggestions and comments are welcome!