Sustainable development of land reclamations and shorelines full scale experiments as a driver for public - private innovations

With 80% of the world's population living in lowland urban areas by 2050, sea levels gradually rising and societal demands on the quality of living increasing, sustainable development of coastal zones becomes increasingly urgent as well as complex. Modern strategies for the design and implementation of measures for infrastructure development, coastal protection and other functions adopt the concept of Building with Nature to handle these challenges. Recently, two full scale experiments were implemented to assess the benefits of the this approach for coastal development. The Sand Motor pilot project addresses the potential concentrated nourishments on the basis of a 21 million m3 shore nourishment at the Delfland coast in the Netherlands. This unprecedented experiment aims to protect the hinterland from flooding by letting natural processes distribute sand over shoreface, beach and dunes, thus constituting a climate-robust and environmentally friendly way of coastal protection. The second experiment addresses the concept of seabed landscaping in sand extraction sites, which aims to add ecological value to the sand borrow areas after construction. Both pilots have been monitored since their completion in 2010/2011 and will be monitored extensively in the coming years

Rechtspraak om de hoek

This special issue of Justitiële verkenningen ‘Court around the corner’ focuses on the (physical) distance between the judiciary and the citizen. Many court locations in the Netherlands have been closed in recent years, with the aim of realizing cost savings through the centralization of justice. But even after the revision of the judicial map in 2013, which closed a substantial part of the court locations, the costs kept only increasing. In the meantime a genuine counter-movement seems to have emerged. It focuses on effective services, wants to leave the (ivory) office towers and be present in the neighborhoods. In Dutch parliament research was requested into the applicability of (elements of) the Belgian Peace Judge, and justice provisions ‘in every municipality’. An experiment with a ‘consultation judge’ in Groningen received enthusiastic follow-up with district, neighborhood and rule judges elsewhere in the country. A serious limitation of these experiments however is these procedures can only be started if both parties agree. Research shows that if the parties have the will to get out of it together, this often works without a judge. Matters that do come to court are primarily those disputes in which one party wants something, but the other benefits from the persistence of the impasse. Therefore it seems obvious that a latent need for administration of justice lies mainly in a low-threshold procedure in which the other party is obliged to appear in court