Deltas remain habitable
The greatest challenge of all time has begun for the Netherlands and deltas worldwide: keeping deltas habitable while the land continues to sink, the sea rises, the weather and discharge regimes become more erratic and we are also faced with a loss of biodiversity.
As a result, deltas are facing complex planning challenges that require an integrated approach to strike a balance between living, working, energy, mobility, nature and agriculture in a changing landscape. Knowledge of water and subsurface systems and understanding of future socio-ecological changes in densely populated delta areas are indispensable for the complex design task that follows.
ReThink the Delta
How will the Netherlands and the rest of our world stay liveable with two to three metres of sea level rise, extreme dry conditions, precipitation and land subsidence? The ReThink the Delta programme offers an answer to this generational and existential issue.
Challenge for the next hundred years
Over the course of a single year, a broad-based community of professionals has drawn up a development agenda. By working on this issue over the next decade, we will give the delta community of the future the tools to optimally harness innovative and intellectual capacity, and to be prepared for the challenge of the next 100 years.
Industry, knowledge institutes and public partners
The programme brings together industry, knowledge institutes and public partners to elaborate a range of well-founded designs and possible courses of action for our country. Keeping the philosophy of Mazzucato's moonshots in mind, the Netherlands will remain liveable and, as the first country in the world, we will implement the hydraulic and spatial challenge of the future. This societal ambition will boost knowledge and innovation in the area of critical infrastructure, our water management and adaptive building. In addition, it will be the calling card for the decades ahead for the ongoing marketing and upscaling of hydraulic engineering services, solutions and delta technology (digital and otherwise) worldwide. The programme will help to establish climate-resilient conditions for business.
Open invitation
ReThink the Delta is an open coalition of parties working together on the future of our delta. There is an open invitation to work with the initiators in the programme and/or play an active role as a user. This can involve engaging in R&D, experiments, developing designs and strategies for our delta, or involvement in a use case as a user. We are happy to explore additionality further and we are explicitly looking to establish coordination and alignment with public parties in order to build on existing programmes, and shape our future ambitions with one another.