Delta Alliance Young Professionals Award
In scope of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in June 2012, Delta Alliance organized a Young Professionals Award, inviting young delta professionals around the world to present their solutions to the challenges which river deltas are facing.
The Dutch ministry of Infrastructure and Environment hosted and supported this award, which was coordinated by Delta Alliance in cooperation with Both Ends, Alterra, University of Twente, Grontmij, Arcadis, Deltares and WWF.
An impressive number of 53 teams of young professionals from 29 countries answered the call and handed in their propositions of how to solve acute delta challenges such as land subsidence, saltwater intrusion or coastal erosion, and many more. An international Jury had the difficult task to select the award winners (jury report).
On the 21st of June 2012, the winners of the Delta Alliance Young Professionals Award were presented at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The award-winning proposals were:
- Thriving Deltas by Richard Fisher and Ryan Whipple proposes the transformation of a location at risk in the Sacramento – San Joachim Delta in California into a pilot ground for new promising developments
- Re-generation Delta by Frederico Curiel proposes a strategy for large scale micro-algae harvesting, converting the farmland along the coastline of the Pearl River Delta into large scale open algae harvesting ponds
- Balance Island by Sander van Rooi, Emil Kuijs and Bert van Bueren aims at reducing salt intrusion and restoring natural estuarine dynamics and ecology by creating a semienclosed estuary with a series of constructed sandy islands in the South West Rhine-Meuse Delta in the Netherlands
Follow up
The three teams that received the Delta Alliance Young Professional Award have since then been working on the further development of their winning innovative solution for specific delta issues. The award consisted of scientific, organisational and financial support (10.000 euro) for the follow up phase. The final reports of the three award winning teams can be found at their respective webpages: Thriving Deltas, Re-Generation Delta and Balance Island. The Delta Alliance secretariat is pleased to acknowledge that the awards have substantially contributed to increase the chance to bring the award winning solutions into practice. The final report of the whole Delta Alliance Young Professional Award is available here.
Links
- Original call for this award
- Thriving Deltas
- Re-generation Delta
- Balance Island
- Media: Rio+20: Threats of climate change on Deltas worldwide (RTCC Interview Wim van Driel, June 2012)
Downloads
- Delta Alliance Young Professionals Award Booklet with the ten best contributions, including those of the three winning teams (pdf, 22Mb)
- Original call for this award: the flyer
- Final report on the Delta Alliance Young Professionals Award activity
