Partner meeting Antwerp/ Herentals

03 October 2018 - Published by Manon van de Riet

From 25-28 September, Flanders Environment Agency welcomed the CATCH project partnership in Antwerpen and Herentals for a series of meetings. 35 Delegates from different organizations across the North Sea Region came together to share their ideas and experiences on the needs of midsize cities to deal with climate change adaptation and the resulting extreme weather events.

One of the pilot cities in CATCH is the Flemish city of Herentals. Herentals is a relatively small city located on the sandy soils of the Campine region in the valley of the Kleine Nete river. Historically, the Nete system defined the city as it is today. However, anticipated climate change impacts incl. more frequent extreme weather events, raise questions on how to the city can meet emerging demands for urban development without neglecting the water safety of its citizens or the presence of the existing green-blue networks. With CATCH, Flanders Environment Agency and the City of Herentals want to develop an action plan to make this possible. To get a better insight in the scope of the Herentals case and the expectations of all stakeholders, the CATCH Decision Support Tool team visited the city.

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During the meeting all CATCH-project partners met up in Antwerp to continue working on the development of the tool, which will act as the backbone for all cases in the project. Additional interaction was facilitated between all other cities in the project: Arvika (SE), Enschede (NL), Norwich (UK), Oldenburg (DE), Velje (DK) & Zwolle (NL). There was particular interest in stakeholder communication and cost-benefit analysis of ecosystem services.

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After what was considered to be a very useful series of meetings, all project partners returned back home with tons of inspiration to continue working on their sustainable North Sea Region communities.