Attending the “International Climate Change Adaptation Conference”

by Adriano, Celma, Joaquim and Noor

Through NWO we got the possibility of attending the 4th International Climate Change Adaptation Conference (10-13 May 2016) in Rotterdam. The conference has the watchword “Adaptation Futures 2016: Practices and Solutions”. The venue with different features included plenaries, round tables, science session, practice session and science-practice session. The themes covered included cities and infrastructures; food, forestry and rural livelihoods; fresh water availability and access; public health; ecosystems based ecosystem based adaptation; disaster risk reduction and the artic. Cross-cutting issues covered topics such as, risk assessment, adaption planning and evolution; institutions and governance and; finance, investment and business. The opening speech was done by Melanie Schultz van Haegen, Minister of Infrastructure and Environment of the Netherlands; Robert-Jan Smits, Director for Research and Innovation, representative of the European Commission; and Ibrahim Thiaw, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. Continue reading

Studying and living in the Netherlands – first impressions

by Joaquim Nhampoca

This is a kind of narrative of a quite long process of my coming to the Netherlands for my project. The main purpose is to share with everyone about my PhD programme and obviously my stay in Delft. To make it clear I will start by the application for the PhD position, arrival and accommodation, studying at UNESCO-IHE, and finally living in Delft. Continue reading

First group meeting

by André

We organized our first project meeting since the appointment of the four PhD candidates. The two-day meeting took place in Delft on the last week of September and everybody was presented, the PhD candidates and their supervisors and promotors; we were very happy to host Maria Rusca traveling from the UK and Nelson Matsinhe and Sandra Manuel from Mozambique. We would also like to thank Michel Riemersma for taking to time to be present during the first day and presenting the ideas that RoyalHaskoningDHV has for future developments in Maputo. Continue reading