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Stichting Deltares

Deltares

Deltares is an independent institute for applied research in the field of water and subsurface.

Lobbying Activity

Response to European Water Resilience Strategy

4 Mar 2025

With respect to the call for evidence, considering the challenges the EU is facing with respect to climate change, sea level rise, extreme weather, water scarcity, urbanisation, water quality and loss of biodiversity, we recommend for the following points to be considered or emphasized in the European Water Resilience Strategy. Enable innovative governance for the synergistic management of floods and droughts. Accelerate Transboundary Regional Adaptation to Climate Extremes, improve and upscale cooperations on flood and drought management and research in a transboundary setting Integrate European observation, prediction and early-warning systems for extreme events with national and regional tools, especially in the context of transboundary river basins. Strengthen the Source-to-Sea approach. Adopt a resilience lens and integrate social vulnerability into flood and drought risk management. Invest in the infrastructure of the future combining green and grey solutions. Upscale and mainstream Nature-based Solutions by adopting a quantified integrated landscape approach. Increase the connection between the EU digital ambition and the Water Resilience Strategy. Amplify the role of role of water as an instrument for dialogue and peace in the current international geopolitical context. See attached memo for more information.
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Meeting with Christian Ehler (Member of the European Parliament)

30 Aug 2024 · Future KIC on water, maritime and marine sectors

Meeting with Virginijus Sinkevičius (Commissioner) and

4 Jul 2023 · To discuss Commission’s legislative proposals currently in co-decision (on Integrated Water Management, revised Urban Wastewater Treatment and Industrial Emissions Directives) and international water related initiatives.

Response to Navigation And Inland Waterway Action and Development in Europe (NAIADES) III Action Plan 2021-2027

15 Jan 2021

Deltares welcomes the opportunity to react to the roadmap Navigation and Inland Waterway Action and Development in Europe (NAIADES) III Action Plan 2021-2027. We strongly believe that the European Green Deal policy cannot be achieved without steered programmes of innovations in the field of inland water transport. Deltares would like to address three issues that should be specifically emphasized in the roadmap and subsequent actions: Climate proofing and integration In recent years inland shipping in Europe has been less reliable due to climatic events, and transported tons over water decrease (floods and especially droughts), while the ambition is to increase the transported tons. To increase the robustness and attractiveness of Inland Waterway Transport (IWT), Europe will need an international organization that takes the lead, and brings together all relevant disciplines (water/hydrologists/hydraulics/morphology, maritime, logistics, ecology) to develop measures to cope with climate change and increased transport, while taking into account the multi-dimensional functions of rivers, canals and lakes through integrative approaches among all water users towards ecologic, societal, economic and safety-related functions. Important issues to address: Collaboration and sharing of data, development of tools to assess a variety of different measures for improved navigability, improve physical infrastructure (bottlenecks), improve forecasts for better predictability, reliability, decision-making (short, medium, long-term forecasts), integration of IWT in logistic chain for improved multimodal transport. A window of opportunity for a systemic approach: aging infrastructure Deltares wishes to highlight that major parts of the existing infrastructure are aging, resulting in decreasing reliability and increasing maintenance. The replacement and refurbishment needs pose an opportunity to rethink and redesign inland water shipping to meet the various challenges in the Green Deal and to update into smart structures, furbished with sensors to feed the development of digitalisation of inland navigation. A combination of a systemic, network wide approach needs to go hand in hand with local innovative solutions. The network design needs to combine the Ten-T network with local (national, multimodal) initiatives to ensure effective door-to door intermodal transport. Deltares hence largely supports the response made by an anonymous public authority on 21-12-2020. Greening the infrastructure design, construction and maintenance While inland shipping is indeed more environmentally friendly than other modes of transport, Deltares advocates that the greening effort extends beyond the greening of the fleet. Design, construction, use, maintenance and decommissioning of inland waterway infrastructure has significant impacts, both in terms of climate footprint as in terms of ecological and biodiversity impacts. Deltares therefore endorses the call by Wetlands International (posted 22-12-2020) to ensure the appropriate integration of environmental objectives in the Navigation and Inland Waterway Action and Development in Europe, making environmental and climate impacts a key criterion for investments”. The aforementioned points could be reflected in the current document as such in section B.
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Response to Pharmaceutical Strategy - Timely patient access to affordable medicines

16 Jun 2020

Deltares welcomes the "Pharmaceutical Strategy - Timely patient access to affordable medicines" roadmap. In particular challenge 7 ('environmental risks') lies within our interest and expertise. We consider that this challenge should be more comprehensively phrased, and would like to propose the following: The way environmental risks are addressed needs to be improved. To respond fully to the objectives a green economy, including for instance Farm2Fork and Aichi biodiversity targets, the regulatory framework needs to address the environmental implications of production, use and disposal of medicines. ‘Environmentally Safe by Design’ will be considered as a leading principle for all stages of human and veterinary pharmaceutical production, use and disposal. Besides major challenges regarding antimicrobial resistance, attention shall be given to harmful ecosystem impacts such as bio-accumulation, cross-resistance and hormone-disrupting chemicals. This requires in-depth knowledge of environmental processes, inter-sector collaboration and monitoring along the value chain.
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