Session 6: International opportunities – by Polite Laboyrie (Witteveen & Bos)
Four interesting but totally different pitches were given in this session. Arjen Luijendijk from the TU Delft gave an introduction by setting the scene. Mary Veira from the hotel and resort community from Negril Jamaica gave a pitch about the problems on the beach of Negril. Bad infrastructure planning and management has led to multiple problems including increasing erosion of the beach. Next was a pitch of Hans Hanson; professor in civil engineering at the Lund University in Sweden. His pitch concentrated on the fact that the Swedish legislation more or less forbids coastal protection and that local permiters have not enough knowledge to understand that coastal protection is really required. The last duo-pitch by Giovanni Cecconi from the Venice Resilience Lab and Giordano Lipari a Specialist in hydrodynamics at WaterMotion.nl was about the challenges of management of the sediments in the Venice Lagoon and all the things they learned from the many studies they executed. Their biggest question was about how can we exchange al the gained knowledge.
In the interesting discussions with the audience in the well filled room the case of Jamaica showed that technical solution are available but not all the stakeholder are aligned. A pilot project could help to align the stakeholders and perhaps helps to find funds like from the international financing institutes. The discussion on the Swedish case let to the conclusion that it would be good to involve decision makers in an earlier stage of a project in order to let them understand what the problems and consequences are. For a better understanding by the public, beach programs could be supported by taxes. Users could so understand that a beach is not for free, it costs a lot of money to construct and maintain them. The audience agreed on the Venice case that exchange of knowledge is important. Similarities between projects can benefit each other by sharing information. Perhaps a European platform on Building with Nature could be established.