Mainstreaming climate adaptation into water management in the Netherlands: The governance of the Dutch Delta Program

Whereas the literature on adaptation is rich in detail on impacts, vulnerability and limits to adaptation, less is known about governance systems that facilitate adaptation in practice. This paper offers preliminary conclusions on the constraints and opportunities for mainstreaming adaptation to climate change into water management in the Netherlands. We use the term mainstreaming for the integration of adaptation actions into ongoing sectoral planning to reduce climate vulnerability. In particular we look at the integration of climate adaptation and water management, currently underway in the implementation of the Dutch Delta Program. The Delta Program is an integral policy program executed by the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality and the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment. The paper analyses the current implementation of the Delta program in the Netherlands according to the dimensions of the Earth System Governance framework: Architecture, Agents, Adaptiveness, Accountability, Allocation and Knowledge. The analysis suggests that all five governance dimensions are considered to capitalise on opportunities for successfully planning and implementing the Delta Program and its subprograms. Architecture gets most attention at present, but the implementation depends on the subprograms and varies over time. Program bodies generally bring together government agencies from different levels of government (national, provincial, municipal and water boards). A challenge for the new emerging program bodies is to move towards legitimate, accountable ánd adaptive governance. The program so far has little attention for coalitions of government actors and non-government actors or conferring accountability to stakeholders. One of the aims of the Delta Program is innovation of water management. At present science has few strategies analysed or tested to support this innovation. Typical advice includes encouraging innovation through a rich variety of experiments and transition approaches that probe possible directions. Although the Delta Act provides in setting up experiments, financial support is conditional on co-financing and so far subprograms do not plan for such experiments. The fragmented implementation of the delta program could be turned into advantage by recognising different subprograms as a set of experiments, from which actors can learn. The analysis suggests more attention could be given to experiments that test and debate new ideas through collaboration between recognised actors from civil society, policy and science. Promising options for pilots could be the integration of agro-environmental land use systems that regulate regional climate impacts on water systems with new technologies, organisational responsibilities and financial instruments. Here governance faces creating flexible financial instruments that facilitate benefit- and burden-sharing, social learning and that support potentially better-adapted new strategies rather than compensate for climate impacts on existing activities. A challenge remains how to scale up regional pilot results to what is required for long-term national safet

Large proper motion of the Thorne–Żytkow object candidate HV 2112 reveals its likely nature as foreground Galactic S-star

Using the Southern Proper Motion (SPM) catalog, we show that the candidate Thorne-\.Zytkow object HV~2112 has a proper motion implying a space velocity of about 3000\kms if the object is located at the distance of the Small Magellanic Cloud. The proper motion is statistically different from that of the SMC at approximately $4\sigma$ in SPM, although the result can drop to about $3\sigma$ significance by including the UCAC4 data and considering systematic uncertainties in addition to the statistical ones. Assuming the measurement is robust, this proper motion is sufficient to exclude its proposed membership of the Small Magellanic Cloud and to argue instead that it is likely to be a foreground star in the Milky Way halo. The smaller distance and therefore lower brightness argue against its proposed nature as a Thorne-\.Zytkow object (the hypothesized star-like object formed when a normal star and a neutron star merge) or a super-Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) star. Instead we propose a binary scenario where this star is the companion of a former massive AGB star, which polluted the object with via its stellar wind, i.e. a special case of an extrinsic S star. Our new scenario solves two additional problems with the two existing scenarios for its nature as Thorne-\.Zytkow object or present-day super-AGB star. The puzzling high ratio of the strength of calcium to iron absorption lines is unexpected for SMC supergiants, but is fully consistent with the expectations for halo abundances. Secondly, its strong variability can now be explained naturally as a manifestation of the Mira phenomenon.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted to MNRAS Letters, replaced tex file to make figure display properly, no changes to tex

Localized boundary-domain singular integral equations based on harmonic parametrix for divergence-form elliptic PDEs with variable matrix coefficients

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official publised version can be accessed from the links below. Copyright @ 2013 Springer BaselEmploying the localized integral potentials associated with the Laplace operator, the Dirichlet, Neumann and Robin boundary value problems for general variable-coefficient divergence-form second-order elliptic partial differential equations are reduced to some systems of localized boundary-domain singular integral equations. Equivalence of the integral equations systems to the original boundary value problems is proved. It is established that the corresponding localized boundary-domain integral operators belong to the Boutet de Monvel algebra of pseudo-differential operators. Applying the Vishik-Eskin theory based on the factorization method, the Fredholm properties and invertibility of the operators are proved in appropriate Sobolev spaces.This research was supported by the grant EP/H020497/1: "Mathematical Analysis of Localized Boundary-Domain Integral Equations for Variable-Coefficient Boundary Value Problems" from the EPSRC, UK