For the
last two weeks I’ve been in Stockholm, attending the Stockholm World Water Week (SWWW), followed by a research visit hosted by the Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI). Both ‘events’ were a great opportunity to talk with
many people about the topics I work and discuss about the particularities of
the deltas where the research takes place.
At the
SWWW, still, it is not easy to get immediately in touch with people working on
or interested in similar topics – the seize of the conference (over 3000 people
participated) and the broadness of the theme (water and development) made it
very likely that you would connect with people working on totally different
dimensions of water. It required some targeted, on-site researching and
contacting.
So, I was happy that the week after the event was dedicated to planned
and more focused discussions with ‘matching’ organizations and individuals when
it comes to research topics. Besides SEI you can think about organizations such
as the Global Water Partnership, the Stockholm Resilience Centre,
and the Stockholm International Water Institute.
Today I
gave a presentation at SEI about controlled flooding in deltas and discussed with the
participants about how to conceptualize deltas, and how controlled flooding
(and associated sedimentation processes) might contribute to building long term
delta resilience – not only for humans inhabiting the delta, but also for the
delta as a dynamic ecosystem itself. You can find the slides of the
presentation via Slideshare. The conclusion was that the paper, written
by Jan and me, which includes all these kinds of issues, will find a large
community interested to read it and to continue thinking about dealing with delta flood dynamics ;p!
