Two articles, Copenhagen’s plan and how the EU is working through Water & the Urban agenda
The Source ‘Copenhagen City Council signed off on its master plan for cloudburst management in November to be gradually implemented over the next 20 years. Jonathan Andrews explains what the US$1.4 billion plan entails and whether it can become a benchmark for other cities. The infamous cloudburst that struck Copenhagen in 2011 inundated the city with 15 centimetres of rain in less than three hours, flooding basements, train stations and key arterial roads. The flooding, according to the city, caused 6 billion Danish kroner (US$863 million) worth of damage, not including direct costs of repairing municipal infrastructure or indirect costs such as loss of earnings. City officials, in the same year, released its now renowned climate adaptation strategy that set the Danish capital along the path of becoming the first city in the world to be carbon neutral by 2025. Although a cloudburst plan had been part of this ambitious strategy, the floods of 2011 pushed it to the top of the agenda. “The impact of events like that [the 2011 cloudburst] created much more of a political focus,” explains Lykke Leonardsen, head of Climate Unit, Copenhagen City Council. “We had thought we would have a cloudburst management plan that only needed to cover about a third of the city which would be the most affected part, but what happened in 2011 meant we had to do a city-wide plan.” Click here to read more
MEP Water Group Public session on ‘Water in the Urban Agenda’ – see the presentations
On Wednesday 6th of April, the MEP Water Group, in cooperation with the Dutch EU Presidency held a public session dedicated to the theme ‘Water in the Urban Agenda’, with a link to ‘Τhe Leeuwarden Declaration’ at the European Parliament in Brussels. The session was chaired by Esther de Lange, in her capacity as the President of the MEP Water Group and featured Aziza Akhmouch, Head of the OECD Water Governance Programme, Mario Cerutti, Senior Water Expert, Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure & Environment, Richard Elelman, Coordinator of the BlueSCities Project and Pavel Misiga, Head of the Water Unit, European Commission as speakers of the session.
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