Speech by Mr. Schaap ****************************************************************************************** * Speech by Mr. Schaap ****************************************************************************************** Your Highness, Your Excellence, Spectabilis chancellor, Ladies and gentlemen, and honoured As president of the Dutch Association of Water-boards and as a member of the Dutch team, i congratulate the Czech and the Dutch partners of the Risk Analysis project with the succes of it. A special word of respect concerns the Dutch fund Partners for Water, which gave fi support to this initiative. I am convinced that the results of this mutual Czech - Dutch p be beneficiary for the water management in both countries. Risk analyses, a method combini benefits of flood preventing policies, is a rather new approach of research and decision m the threat of floods and the choice of adequate measures. It combines data concerning the as well as economy and policy. I hope that the results will function as a challenge toward improvement of this method and - being the ultimate objective of the developed tools - the of it. What I hope for as well, is that this project - actually already the second we organized t encourage a further mutual cooperation in water management between the Czech Republic and At first glance such a successful cooperation may sound a little bit strange, as from a ge perspective our countries may be seen as opposites. Your country is situated at the very o river basins, whilst the Netherlands is formed at the very end of them, being a genuine de so often, extremes may meet and join fruitfully. As modern river basin management should i policies for complete river basins, there is only logic in combining the experiences and p partners that cover the complete course of rivers and all problems, challenges and solutio By cooperation we may learn from each other, and the risk analyses project has proven the Cooperation inspires learning. Your risk situation and approaches inspired us. About this inspiration another interesting point of attention. It may sound a little bit s from the Dutch side, specifically Arcadis, offered you well developed principles for a ris approach. This might generate suggestions from your side that the Dutch have already far-r experiences with these tools. This however, is not the case. I remember mister Puncochar b astonished when he heard this. Until now we use the standard of what we call exceeding fre from the sea- and river side. Dikes and dams should be high, massive and sustainable enoug the exceeding of water flows, this based on legal norms. Since our Delta Plans the strengt protect us against exceeding situations that - roughly spoken - may occur once in 1.250 - Nowadays the Dutch government and water-boards are investigating a more adequate safety ap includes risk analyses as well. So we need experiences, which means, that we might learn f and your efforts to implement these tools. You may understand, this proves to be a real mu A few more words about the situation concerning the threat of floods in my country and abo We often noticed your conviction that we in the Netherlands offer an example of a high dev management in general, specifically a readiness for accuracy concerning defence measures. image is correct, but it is not all the truth. In many respects we are not better than all to be. During history we many times showed the same attitude as elsewhere: a reactive one. trouble arise - wait and see - and after that, often too late, we reacted. The many, many bursts in our dikes form an open demonstration of this attitude. Recently we have been sur disasters, from the sea side in 1953, from the river side in 1995 and by superfluous rainf proved to be too late, discussed too long, did not want to believe that these threats were whén we react, we show our technical and political readiness, as may be proved by our huge the sea side, built after 1953, and all dike and dam improvements after 1995. A reactive a but has dangerous implications. Nowadays we try to change this attitude, convert it into a pro active way of decision maki And here you might give attention to new policies we developed and which are already in th implementation. One of these policies, developed together with our neighbour countries - a basin policy - is called Space for the River. After 1995 the flood situation convinced us works alone are not enough to protect against the growing risk of floods. So we decided to rivers against the ongoing attack of spatial claims from all sides. We try to reshape the rivers to absorb substantial higher amounts of water and guide it to the sea. A safe river retention capacity. But the concentration on such a capacity of rivers alone is not sufficient. After the heav of 1998 we discovered a risky situation from the land side as well. Also there spatial rec - for agriculture, infrastructure and urban activities - threatens to claim too much space which causes the risk of floods by rainfall. So we launched a revised policy, Water policy century, aiming at combining spatial planning with the conditions set by water management, a higher regional capacity to absorb rainwater. This higher capacity for storage and reten rural ánd urban areas. It forces municipalities and provinces, as well as water-boards, to make our country a safe area to live and work. In order to attune water management and spa the regional authorities should cooperate. Only this type of integrated management may be technical defence measures. Nowadays we speak about the threat of climate change and the e Probably more important is the necessity to correct all direct implications of human activ threat of water. These corrections, that have to be developed within the overall river bas its smaller sub areas, are a major challenge of these days. The policy that replies to thi perfectly within the European Water Framework Directive. I hope our countries may cooperat meet these challenges.