What does ‘Delta Development’ really mean? What does development mean for a delta city? And what does it mean for the larger, surrounding delta landscape? Can the two objectives be reconciled?
According to the Delta Alliance, urban development and delta development NEED to go hand in hand. Efforts to reconcile the two need to be made at two different levels:
- Governance: The main focus of delta programmes is water safety. There is a need to reconcile the priorities of water authorities (catchment areas, rivers, coast lines, and sea water); city planners (high investment plans in urban areas); rural planners (typically low investment plans); and citizens (direct changes to their neighbourhood).
These stakeholders have different time horizons: water authorities’ water safety plans have over 50-year time horizons, while urban and rural territorial plans typically have 20-year outlooks.
Measures employed by one group of stakeholders have effects on others. Measures taken in cities– for example widening of river beds or lakes, restoration of open areas for water retention, removal of houses and buildings—has unwanted formal and informal developments on areas supplying food, water, infrastructure or nature services to the city.
- Natural Resource Management: Delta cities can be classified into one of these five categories, based on the larger landscape they are located within: mountainous, lowland, delta, costal lowland, or coastal hilly. Accordingly, they have different flooding vulnerabilities.
In the webinar (organised April 19, 2017) this framework of delta development is discussed discussed through two cases:
– the Parana delta in Argentina, where rapid urbanisation threatens the sustainability of urban communities
— the Rhine Delta (The Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany), where efforts are afoot to manage land use to achieve food security for the densely populated area
More info:
Produced by: Delta Alliance and TheWaterChannel
Year: 2017
Language: English
Region: Argentina, Western Europe
