Speech Frits Brouwer Director-General KNMI

The Netherlands’ Address at the High-level Meeting on National Drought Policy (HMNDP), Geneva, 11 – 15 March, 2013.

On behalf of the Vice-Minister for Infrastructure and the Environment,

Mrs. Wilma Mansveld,

by Dr. Frits Brouwer, Director-General of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and Permanent Representative to WMO

Distinguished Chair, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

My Deputy Minister for Infrastructure and the Environment, Mrs. Wilma Mansveld, has asked me to render you her apologies for not being able to attend the policy segment of this High-level Meeting on National Drought Policy and to thank the host country Switzerland and the WMO and its co-organizers for their endeavours to make this meeting such a success.

My country, The Netherlands, is a low lying country by the sea; the name of my country reflects this. Sixty percent of my country can be flooded by the North Sea or by the rivers Rhine and Meuse. So, one wouldn’t think that drought is an issue in The Netherlands, but it is! Also in The Netherlands the climate is changing and in particular extremes become more extreme. This also holds for droughts.

Three issues are then especially at risk. Firstly, low water levels in the rivers - as a result of a drought period in the Rhine basin - can cause problems with our power plants due to a lack of cooling water, thus creating a risk for our energy supply system. Secondly, these low water levels can also hamper transport, in a country used to a lot of transport via canals and rivers, thus creating an economic risk. Lastly, if not enough fresh water is streaming through our water system, we face the risk of salt intrusion. The brackish water threatens valuable ecosystems and is not good for agriculture.

However, I should not complain about the situation in The Netherlands with respect to droughts, compared to e.g. the situation in the Horn of Africa. The Netherlands regard it therefore as a privilege to contribute globally to the mitigation of the drought problem, also I view of what my Crown Prince stated yesterday. We are e.g. co-leading the thematic consultations on the post-2015 development agenda for Water. And my Government and the city of The Hague are proud to be the hosts of the 2013 official celebration of World Water Day, Friday next week.

I will now mention 2 more examples of such a Dutch contribution.

Firstly, in view of the knowledge and experience The Netherlands has in the field of water management, it is for my country a chance and an obligation to spread this knowledge. Amongst other themes, the programmes that are sponsored by The Netherlands on efficient water use in agriculture are especially of interest in the context of this meeting. They aim at an improvement of water efficiency in agriculture of 25%in developing countries, so 25% more crop per drop! We concentrate on a group of around 10 partner countries where The Netherlands is co-operating. In this effort we work together with organisations as the World Bank and the Asian and African Development Banks and with NGO’s.

In the field of knowledge, we also sponsor the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft, where every year around 200 water-students from developing countries graduate.

The second special Dutch contribution to the issue of drought is in the field of meteorology. It is clear from this High-level Meeting that the development of adequate drought services is dependent on the availability of long term, high quality, freely available observations on a regional and local scale, for the purpose of monitoring, assessing and projecting climate change.

The International Climate Assessment & Dataset concept (ICA&D) presented during the scientific segment of this meeting, can be of great value in this respect. ICA&D builds on the knowledge and software developed for the European Climate Assessment & Dataset of EUMETNET, with partial funding from the Dutch government and the European Commission. The service consists of a regional web portal for daily station data (brought together through regional cooperation between NMHSs) and derived statistical information. This includes indices of extremes, monitoring the current evolution of the climate, placing significant events (like droughts) in a historical context and providing useful information such as adaptation relevant indices for droughts, heat waves, etc. Both trend maps, climate anomalies and extreme event statistics are included. Web users are able to access this derived climate information to help them in their decision making process.

At present, ICA&D is already operational in three climate vulnerable regions of the world. The Southeast Asian Climate Assessment & Dataset lead by the Indonesian Met Service BMKG has been active for two years now and the Latin American Climate Assessment & Dataset lead by CIIFEN in Ecuador has been active for just over 1 year now. The West African Climate Assessment & Dataset is currently under development at ACMAD in Niger.

My institute KNMI and WMO (via the DARE-programme) are happy to undertake more of these regional efforts within this ICA&D-framework.

Ladies and gentlemen, I come to an end. I want to underline that this meeting forms an important step towards more drought resilient societies. We, as a High-level Meeting, can be proud of that!

Thank you for your kind attention.