Delta Alliance - for the resilience of deltas worldwide

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Tom Bucx, Cees van de Guchte, Wim van Driel, Greet Vink, Renske Peters

Chair(s): Esther Stouthamer

Tuesday 30 june 2015

8:50 - 9:10h at Asia (level 0)

Themes: (T) Special session, (ST) Deltas from multiple pressures to integrated solutions

Parallel session: 4C. Special session: Deltas - from multiple pressures to integrated solutions

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Delta Alliance is an international knowledge-driven network organization with the mission of improving the resilience of the world’s deltas. With increasing pressure from population growth, industrialization and a changing climate, it is more important than ever that these valuable and vulnerable locations increase their resilience to changing conditions. Delta Alliance brings stakeholders involved in delta management together in order to benefit from each other’s experience and expertise and as such contribute to an increased resilience of their delta region, building on scientific research and practical experiences. Delta Alliance has eleven network wings worldwide where activities are focused. The Delta Alliance has many linkages with other networks and initiatives such as the Global Water Partnership strategy 2014-2018, the Belmont Forum Deltas project, the GEF Transboundary Waters Assessment Programme, the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation, and the SIWI/UNEP initiated From Source to Sea partnership. This is further supported by the Sustainable Deltas Initiative 2015 as endorsed by ICSU. One of the most important research activities of the Delta Alliance in the past years was a comparative assessment of the vulnerability and resilience of 14 deltas wordwide, addressing various aspects of delta development and management of deltas. In this collaborative project of the Delta Alliance a framework for delta assessment is applied, combining a DPSIR approach with a Spatial Layer model and addressing also governance aspects. The advantage of this approach is that delta management and development is being considered in an integrated perspective and it is sufficiently generic which makes it applicable for all deltas. Comparison of the scorecards for the different deltas clearly shows that current overall sustainability is not satisfactory for most of them. Many are in the danger zone, which means that they are very vulnerable to adverse drivers of change. An inventory of research gaps has been carried out based on the delta descriptions. This provides an overview of the issues that have been identified for further research and potential opportunities for collaboration.