Gondo (2013) presented several controversial ideas about climate adaptation using the Ethiopian model. At times, pp 88, he frames Ethiopia as a leading developing country in recognizing the importance of green infrastructure, and in other times, pp 91, he argues that urban planning authorities are less prepared to boost the resilience and adaptive capabilities of their cities. From the overall reading, in one page, discuss your own views on the importance inter-governmental cooperation and interdisciplinary approach to deal with climate change in urban & land use planning. In half a page /one paragraph, and according to Bohannon (2010), articulate the main challenges the Nile Delta is facing and suggest main three guiding principles to deal with challenges.
#Env_Plan
Urban & Environmental Studies 
There are a lot of cool things going on in the world to help combat climate change and move the world in a better direction. It is really easy to get bogged down in the negative. Here are a few of my favorite things that give me hope for the world:
1. Restoration agriculture and intensive-cell grazing which is a farming technique that actual sequesters carbon in the ground while producing food, fiber and fuel. Mark Shepard is one of the main players behind this movement. Here is an interview with him and one of the lines I like is “It is all about focusing on how we CAN get stuff done, and not reasons the reason why we CAN’T do something. That is how we actually make progress.”
http://www.permaculturevoices.com/the-future-of-agriculture-changing-the-concept-with-mark-shepard-pvp039/
2. Cradle to Cradle – which I did not even realize is based in Oakland,CA but I have been following their work for a while as they are a big promoter of cradle to grave manufacturing. Very interesting, forward thinking company that is trying to reshape the way we buy and consume products.
http://www.c2ccertified.org/
3. William McDonough – He is the founder of Cradle to Cradle but also has a firm that does really awesome designs. http://www.mcdonoughpartners.com/
4. Studio Gang – Design firm in NYC and Chicago that does a lot of work with designing cities around community needs.
5. Waterkeep Alliance – was started by fisherman to help keep rivers and the ocean clean and ecological and economically healthy. They do really cool work and have done a lot of data collections especially after natural disasters such as Hurricane Harvey. http://waterkeeper.org/
6. WRT – design firm that does a lot of cool work. I learned about them from this project they did in PA to reuse an old steel plant for a community and garden centered space. Was really inspiring to see their presentation. http://www.wrtdesign.com/work/hoover-mason-trestle
Good things to focus on!!
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Thanks!!
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Thanks for sharing. 🙂
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Gondo frames Ethiopia as, “one the few developing countries in Africa that has recognized the pivotal role played by green infrastructure in boosting the resilience and adaptation capabilities of urban ecosystems.” He qualifies that statement by the existence of legal frameworks – the Ethiopian Constitution and the Ethiopian Urban Development Policy. These laws have created the National Urban Planning Institute, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Disaster Planning Unit in Ethiopia. The national government has also adopted the National Adaptation Programme of Action in the face of impacts of climate change on the rural and urban environments. This is a program from the UNFCCC that helps Least Developed Countries to identify their priority adaptation needs to climate change and communicate them out of the country to interested organizations. Gondo goes on to prove through his research that despite the creation of these agencies and laws there is very little planning and implementation at the local level to affect the resilience of urban environments in the face of climate change. The reason for this is a disjuncture between various governmental units who do not communicate or work in tandem, such as the natural and environmental resources groups and urban planning groups. There is also a critical lack of stakeholder involvement because there is very little tradition of stakeholder involvement in planning. Where attempts to enact programs exist, stakeholders resist due to the perception that these are elitist attempts by the state to control. This creates resistance to any attempts to enact planning.
This is nothing new, not only for developing countries but even for more developed nations like the US. We have a proliferation of government agencies at the Federal, National, County, and City levels, each working towards complementary goals but rarely coordinating together. If one recalls the fallout from the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center one realizes it is not unusual for government agencies to be silo’d even on other critical matters such as national security. Having worked a little within a governmental agency attempting to manage and plan, I believe this is partially a failure of the culture and partially a failure of mandates. Managers jealously guard their resources and domain of control while resisting transparency because of the threat of liability. I’m sorry to say, but a vast majority of managers in land use planning may have very little background, understanding, or even interest planning for resiliency in the face of climate change. They may be more focused on resource extraction, recreational uses, or maintaining minimal levels of critical services in the face of diminishing budgets. Those with expertise may also lack the appropriate mandates and jurisdictional controls to have an effect on urban and rural resiliency.
Do countries at all levels of development need planning and ACTION towards making our infrastructure more resilient? Yes, of course. I believe that progress can be made top-down from government mandating change and enforcing these changes. I think the more effective and sustainable way is bottom-up, community-led progress because even without the pressure of regulating agencies these changes will be self-sustaining. Whether we get there by educating the population or by creating a popular media campaign, I don’t know. Thomas Jefferson believed that only with a well-educated population could democracy succeed. However, I don’t think it’s a far stretch to teach people to act in their own best self-interest, we just have to be humble and acknowledge that the more immediate needs of most of the world are for food, security, healthcare, and education and if we frame climate change resilience as addressing security we may get somewhere.
Bohannon created a pleasant narrative describing the challenges faced by the government and peoples living in the Nile River Delta area as created by the damming of the Nile to control flooding. These problems are not unlike those created in California for the San Joaquin River Delta. Sediments are not flowing down-river, salt water is intruding, and land is subsiding below sea level. These problems are created by the damming of the river which was done to control flooding and store water for agricultural uses. In light of the challenges I have three principles for planning projects that have to do with altering the natural environment:
1. Plan for at least 100 years in the future. Infrastructure has a shelf life and will need to be replaced and reevaluated. What once seemed like a good idea might no longer be relevant.
2. Be prepared and plan for to undo infrastructure projects if they prove not to fulfill their original purpose or more costly than beneficial.
3. Don’t break it if you aren’t prepared to fix it. Regulations need to be in place to roll back development in the face of fluctuating environmental conditions.
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Agree with your points. No need to be sorry when you say your opinion about Land Use Planners 😀
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Intergovernmental cooperation and interdisciplinary approaches are integral to all aspects of environmental policies and issues, but especially for dealing with climate change. Gondo’s article showed that planners and landscape architects in Ethiopia do not feel equipped to deal with such a complex issue. This made me wonder who and where are there planners that are feeling confident about tackling these issues?
One of the major concerns that Gondo brings up is the lack of guidelines on how to plan and implement strategies for creating cities that are resilient to climate change. There are international guidelines and research projects on how to plan for climate change issues, but the reality is that this new territory. One of the issues that Gondo brings up is the importance of understanding local impacts and conditions for Ethiopia. Some of the climate change research and information is based on either a global scale or focuses on the Western world and other wealthy nations. It is very important that more research is created, or current research is adapted to looking at smaller scale systems. It is vital that world leaders and agencies are communicating and exchanging information within all scales of government so that effective action can be completed from the ground up.
In addition to the disconnect between the scales of government, Gondo also notes that urban planners are using stand-alone adaptations to address climate issues instead of integrating projects. This is an understandable technique due to the urgency of climate change and the need to create solutions for the short-term. However, it is imperative that there are urban planners or other agencies that are planning for long-term and integrated solutions. Without this type of forethought, issues will repeat themselves in ten or twenty years.
The lack of cohesion between the built environment and green spaces in urban areas is not a unique problem to Ethiopia. Within the industry of planning there has been a shift over the last twenty years to integrate the built world with green space especially in cities. It has become more of a common practice, yet there is still a lot of work to be done to have architects and landscape architects work together to create unified design spaces that allow for green spaces. A change in the education of these professions is helping to promote this new mindset and there also needs to be policy change to reinforce the benefits of green space within urban settings.
Another issue that Gondo touches on is the lack of stakeholder involvement in projects. This is a multifaceted issue as community members decline to participate due to lack of trust in the process, concerns of elite control or lack of knowledge or understanding of the project. This is a hard issue to solve not just in Ethiopia, but across the world. Even in the United States people who participate in the planning process often are misinformed or vote against projects that are actually directly beneficial to their interests.
Overall, it is apparent that there are divides between all facets of government, public and private process, and within planning professions. The need for interdisciplinary work is more timely than ever. Governments from the global to the local need to work together. To tackle the issue of climate change will require all professions to work together on diverse teams and step outside of the norms of what the profession used to dictate as standard practice.
According to Bohannon the Nile Delta is facing many challenges that are becoming compounded and more complex as time passes. The population of the delta area is already taxing the water sources and the population is expected to increase by one million every year. Agriculture and daily water needs are putting so much pressure on the Nile that the river no longer empties into the Mediterranean sea. Due to the damming of the river the delta is sinking, the coast is eroding and sediment and soil are building up within the river channel. This has affected fish populations off the coast of the delta as well as decreased the quality of the water in the river.
From the article one of the major processes that needs to change is the government restricting research and data collection on the river and the consequences of the dam. It seems that the government has now turned to scientists and researchers wanting information and answers only to be met with blank stares since the government in the past had continually denied research requests on the problems. Despite the lack of finalized data, many of the issues caused by the dam are apparent and therefore it is alarming that the government has decided that the answer is to divert more water from the river and attempt to create a new region for agriculture with very little thought on what impact this may have. Data needs to be collected not only on the effects of the dam, but also on the use and flow of the current water. If over ⅔ of the wells in the delta are illegal that shows both the lack of information on where water is used and the lack of regulation on how the water is being used.
It was encouraging that there is work being done to learn from the Dutch’s success with flooding and water control. Use of engineered wetlands and restoration of the coastline with sand dune construction and beach nourishment is a positive move forward that the government should continue funding.
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Urban and land use planning in cities became a crucial point of both climate change-related risks and disasters. Gondo talks about lack of partnership among ecologists, urban designers, landscape architects, and urban residents to integrate science and planning in response to climate change. I agree with Gondo that the inter-governmental cooperation is an excellent tool to address urban and land use planning when climate change is often located across governmental boundaries. The interdisciplinary approach is key to link climate change in urban and land use planning.
Intergovernmental cooperation is particularly important when several separate municipalities and other governmental agencies operate in a region and affect the area’s climate change. Gondo sites that Norman observed that future design of urban settlements and infrastructure in response to climate change would require both an inter-governmental and multi-disciplinary approach that integrates science and urban planning. Norman duly noted that the integration of public and private land management would be a critical factor in managing cumulative impact and risk as a result of climate change. For example, South Korea and Japan took cooperative initiatives in environmental protection, energy, and climate change. Japan was interested in creating a stable energy supply system in Asia by improving oil-based energy security. Thus, both countries advanced intergovernmental cooperation to pursue national goals under particular circumstances. South Korea also promoted environmental cooperation with Beijing. For example, China’s rapid economic expansion imposed growing environmental burdens on South Korea. Asian dust storm (ADS or also known as “yellow dust”) occurs at desert and loess areas in the northwest of China and comes across Beijing over the water to Korea, Japan, and even further area during the spring. ADS is a fine particle blown up by a strong wind that spreads out in the atmosphere and slowly falls back to the ground, but smaller particles remain suspended in the air for a week or more. South Korea sends people to help North China planting vegetation to mitigate ADS every spring.
An interdisciplinary approach to handle climate change in urban and land use planning is vital. Gondo states that the existing knowledge gap has limited our understanding of the extent to which climate adaptation practices are embedded in sound land use planning practices. Looking at a prediction of local area effect by climate change is an important step to understand the scope and magnitude of climate change-related challenges to the cities. For example, building placement, material selection, the design of a building envelope, and landscaping of the immediate environment. In South Korea, the sustainable development is uprising concept to guide urban planning in response to climate change. However, we struggle with lack of practical guidelines on how to translate the idea into practice has slowed down its effective implementation. Therefore, I agree with Gondo that the inter-governmental cooperation and interdisciplinary is an excellent tool to address climate change and urban land use planning, but we need more practical guidelines to follow.
Main challenges in Nile Delta include: (a) before the Nile reaches the Mediterranean, farmers draw water from wells, which two-thirds of the wells in the delta are illegal, for irrigation use; (b) The Nile Delta faces coastal erosion and subsidence. As the sea level rise, the delta is unevenly sinking, and lose one-third of the delta. Before the High Dam, floods wiped out homes and farms, while droughts brought famine and disease. However, the annual flood deposited a fresh silt onto the delta’s surface which provided nutrient for the crops. Without the annual flood flushing the delta clean, sewage, fertilizers, and industrial waste go nowhere; (c) Other problems include decreasing fishery for sardine and anchovy, increasing water quality problem, lacking detailed (environmental) data and map in this region to advice policy. The three guiding principles to handle challenges include: (1) Examine what a direct cause of the dam is and what is natural variation. Even if one accepts these current subsidence rates, predicting the future topography of the delta is challenging; (2) Permit scientist to study the problems. The Egyptian government banned scientists from taking soil samples for security issue. (3) Encourage the five-year project to strengthen the sand dune systems, beach nourishment, and the establishment of engineered wetlands.
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For those who are interested in dam removal youtube videos:
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Thank you for sharing the Dam Removal videos 🙂
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Gondo suggests that Ethiopia is leading the way in recognizing the importance of environmental resiliency relative to other developing countries, although he seems to conclude that they are not having much success. He mentions that Ethiopia has developed legal frameworks to provide guidelines for climate change mitigation. However, he points to challenges that ultimately minimize the effect these frameworks can have, namely the lack of integration of policies, lack of communication between planning, environmental agencies and disaster management units, and the lack of stakeholder involvement. An inter-governmental and interdisciplinary approach to mitigating climate change is essential to developing integrated adaptation strategies that make the best use of resources and produce more effective solutions. The lack of communication between different municipalities makes the process of planning for long-term solutions difficult. Furthermore, climate issues permeate political boundaries and their solutions should too. More intergovernmental communication may allow different municipalities and different levels of government to pool together their resources to produce solutions that may prepare for climate change on a much larger scale.
Interdisciplinary communication is also extremely important as it allows for the exchange of knowledge and expertise among sectors. Planning departments need the information that environmental agencies collect and these agencies can use the power of intervention within planning departments to implement projects. This is especially important in response to the lack of stakeholder involvement in land use planning processes. Communities are often left out of resiliency planning but are well equipped to provide information about the local impact of climate change, their capacities to adapt to the changing environment and the social and economic considerations for finding solutions that are specific to a city. I personally think that government agencies all over the world are already full of inefficiencies, so integrating environmental efforts is a huge challenge. Furthermore, local communities may choose not to participate in these processes if they are skeptical of government interventions or may not believe that their input will enact any change. When considering these very basic challenges, it is understandable that environmental guidelines are barely implemented when so much groundwork has yet to be laid to even begin to implement guidelines.
The damming of the Nile River was meant to control floods and to make irrigation possible throughout the year. However, it has produced negative consequences for the overall health of the Nile delta. Due to coastal erosion the delta is now sinking and impacting water quality. The river no longer flows into the Mediterranean Sea, as water is being diverted to 10,000 kilometers of canals meant for irrigation of small farms. With sea level rising 1/3 of the delta could be lost by 2050. Given, the expected population growth of a million people per year, this has not only environmental but economic consequences for those who depend on the Nile for survival. The government should focus on the following guiding principles: 1)focus on long term solutions like the strengthening of the dunes system, beach nourishments and establishments of engineering wetlands 2)allow scientists to collect data and study the issues and 3)work with local communities to find solutions and allow for more community input in decision making processes moving forward.
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I can speak towards contemporary approaches to land use and transportation planning. In the US, transportation became a powerful force in shaping the nation through strong influence by the automobile and road building industries. In 1956 the Federal Aid Highway Act was passed, providing funding for the interstate highway system. This massive road building campaign did not have a land use planning component. It connected the nation’s cities together without regard to the communities it displaced to build sections of roads. Its additional motive was to provide access outside of cities to cheap land where single family homes were being built. The land use component could be argued as being market-driven.
From this era of highway building and suburbanization developed a backlash to the needless destruction open space as well as impacts of traffic. Continuing to present day, an alternative mode of development known as integrated land use and transportation planning exists. Federal funding on the levels of the Federal Aid Highway Act no longer exist and communities are finding it increasingly difficult to build and maintain new roadways. In addition, the realization that traffic cannot be solved by building more capacity has forced communities to invest in public transit systems that can carry more people efficiently.
Public transit systems require high enough densities to operate efficiently. Suburban communities are too sprawled out to provide the adequate density for transit to work, therefore land use planning must be applied in order to make transit investments effective. In the San Francisco Bay Area, this strategy is being pressed forward through Plan Bay Area, a combined land use and transportation plan that aims to focus transportation investments to existing urbanized areas. Densification of Priority Development Areas is planned to allow for proper densities for transit to function.
In my opinion, to carry out a rigorous land use and transportation plan, a strong government agency, one that has superiority over individual cities and counties in needed. It must have the specific mandate to pursue the goal of implementing the plan, and have effective enforcement powers to ensure that local jurisdictions under its control follows through with the plan. Such an agency would require authority granted at state and even federal levels.
The Nile Delta is currently sinking because the damming of the Nile prevents the deposit of sediments in to the delta, which historically maintained its height. In addition, 30% of the delta is less than a meter above sea level, and so a large portion of the delta will be inundated because of climate change related sea level rise. The Nile is important because it is the agricultural center of the Nile. In my opinion, the cost of attempting to protect the delta from sea level rise will be cost prohibitive. The best strategy would be to 1) allow environmental planning efforts to guide development 2) allow the delta to become inundated, and 3) invest in newer methods of agriculture that is more water and land efficient to offset the loss of the delta through inundation.
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In the excerpt by Tendayi Gondo, the author says that Ethiopia or other countries in the developing world are lagging while others in the developed world have moved far in terms of dealing with climate change. The author studied the probability of Ethiopian municipalities at adopting planning practices to combat climate change, through various parameters. The results of the study suggested that most Ethiopian urban planning authorities are less than prepared to deal with risks and issues related to climate change. It is noted in the article that a number of municipalities were however had some policy measures in place or were prepared to react to disasters which were caused by climate change.
While many of them are conscious of the effects of climate change, they tend to adopt ad-hoc or informal land use planning approaches.
It is important that there be a good understanding of goals and between the policymakers and other inter-disciplinary stakeholders in order to advance in the case of such countries where financial ability and technical know-how are significantly lacking compared to developed nations. The larger set of stakeholders in such issues generally include the government agencies, research institutes, policy makers, technicians, and farmers. In my opinion, for a country like Ethiopia, or as a matter of fact any developing nation, has the traditional know-how and ability to adapt if not the required financial capability to deal with climate-induced issues. Maybe one of the stakeholders might be better versed on an issue which is of concern and fill the gap there is, between planning, disaster management, policies, and guidelines. Hence, it is important that there is cooperation between the government and the various multi-disciplinary stakeholders to deal with climate change through land use planning.
The Nile delta is facing many challenges that arose first because of the dam that was created to control the floods. This intervention has created negative results including the silt not reaching the Mediterranean and thereby causing coastal erosion. In addition, the water from the Nile is being diverted illegally to irrigate farms in the region. With expected population rise and rise in sea water level, the Delta could be lost. Three possible strategies that could be implemented to avoid this could be- alternate methods of irrigation and agriculture, involving more research and study in the region, learning from other regions of the world that have successfully mitigated similar issues.
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This is an advertisement that was released by the Govt. of India, which aligns with the documentary that we saw. The goddess of wealth is shown leaving the houses of the people who litter and was used to tie between religious beliefs and waste management.
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The fact that Ethiopia is a leading developing country in learning the importance of green infrastructure does not contradict with their lack of preparation to boost the resilience with their countries. Constrained by the resource, less supervision of administrative management, request for funding and urbanization trend, the poor situation of Ethiopia could be recognized when studying its urban planning. It is under this circumstance that inter-governmental cooperation and interdisciplinary approach should be incorporated together to deal with climate change.
The inter-governmental cooperation has two different meanings considering the scale of the government although both of them are very important in dealing with climate change or other critical issues in urban planning. The first which Gondo rarely mentions in his article is that two or more different national governments should have cooperation in handling transnational or global climate change like global warming which could affect shorelines of all the countries with marine territories.
The other is the cooperation between different levels of governments. For example, The Ethiopian National Urban Planning Institute (NUPI), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Disaster Planning Unit and National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) should be defined with clear obligation and cooperate together to deal with inter-regional climate change. In addition, the cooperation of municipal governments is sometimes even more significant is solving some environmental problems. If contaminants come from the upstream of a river, the government of downstream should coordinate with the upstream government to find the source of pollution and recover the river. However, it is a pity to see that most municipalities are in favor of stand-alone adaptation measures opposing an integrated approach because it allows for verifiable use of new and additional funding. The inter-governmental cooperation plays a pivotal role in solving climate change from a whole perspective and actually saves money and resource.
Norman states that multi-disciplinary approach that integrates science and urban planning is crucial in incorporating the preparation for climate change within the process of land use planning. I fully agree with him because we have seen too many examples of urban construction projects without consideration of ecological system or human feelings. Skyscrapers have big influence on adjacent environment. They change the direction and speed of wind as well as blocking heat dissipation. Glass windows cause a great deal of light pollution.
Under an age which encourages cooperation and information sharing, ecologists, urban designers, landscape architects and urban residents still lack a strong partnership to establish an interdisciplinary approach to explore better urban landscape and a strong interest in learning the virtues of other. It is good to know that people are gradually conscious of the importance of climate change. Besides, architects, landscape architects and urban designers in West Europe and America have intentionally created more green space in the city building. Economic growth and education are two most important factors in shaping the thought of having more green infrastructures. The former provides with resource and money to implement it while the latter changes the concept of urban environment.
The major challenges that Nile Delta is facing include costal erosion and subsidence, the compacting of the delta soil. Since the dam blocks the sediments from upstream, the whole delta is sinking while some areas close to the Mediterranean coast is sinking by a centimeter per year. Meanwhile, the rise of Mediterranean Sea level will cause the loss of one-third of the delta by 2050. In addition, since there are more than 50 million people living on the delta, the farmers use the water so efficiently that the Nile cannot reach the sea. Another challenge is the megaproject which transports 10% of the Nile to Toshka where people may not consider as a proper habitat to live. Other challenges contain the shrinking of fishery and limitation of data and maps. Consider the complex dilemma the Nile encounters, the three guide lines I promote are:
1. Take different factors into consideration while making a plan for the future. Although building the dam was not a smart move, it is less likely to simply remove the dam right now. Therefore, when implementing the megaproject, the government should think more about influences on different aspects.
2. Give scientists access to the data, allow them to participate the process of environmental management and listen to their advice. It would never be wrong to consult professionals.
3. Adopt more adaptive management in dealing with the restoration of shoreline. Come up with more applicable solutions rather than encouraging rice cultivation (it’s so stupid).
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Gondo frames Ethiopia as a leading developing country in recognizing the necessary to adapt climate change. Ironically, he also concludes that Ethiopia authorities are less prepared to boost the resilience of their cities. This incongruous conclusion cannot be divorced from the disconnection between different governmental systems, publics, stakeholders and land use planning.
The gap between central government and other stakeholders is one of the main challenges in adapting the climate change. Adapting the climate change is far more than rising policies, strategies and guidelines. It is, moreover, a prevalent recognition/will of the whole society to addressing this problem. Gondo concludes Ethiopia as a leading developing country in recognizing the necessary to adapt climate change based on the central government perspective instead of the whole society. Indeed, the top government realizes the climate change and issues a lot of policies such as PASDEP and EUDP. However, the relentless of stakeholders in adopting those policies shows that the policies couldn’t reflect the wishes of the public. If there is not enough public power from different stakeholders, then the upper land use policies could not be implemented in local level. Hence, climate adaptation is more than inter-governmental cooperation and interdisciplinary approach: it is a system problem requiring connection between all facets of governmental systems, publics, stakeholders and land use planning.
In my points of view, central government plays a crucial role in addressing the disconnection of governmental systems, publics, stakeholders and land use planning. Take the multi governmental cooperation for example, different governmental system in China prefer to guard their data, knowledge and resources because they are compete for chances. There are usually some conflicts between land use planning from urban planning department and environmental protection department. However, in 2014 central government in China announce ‘multi-planning integrated’ policy. In this policy, they announce that different planning from various bureaus should be made in one system. There shouldn’t be any conflicts between planning systems. Central Government also set several places as experiment object to test the effectiveness of this policy. Under this circumstance, the different planning bureaus actively cooperate with each other since they know that responding to central government calls can improve their political competiveness and then bring more opportunities for themselves. So when we talking about inter-governmental cooperation and multidiscipline approach, we have to keep in mind that upper government is duty-bound to promote cooperation.
The top down effect and bottom up effort are both indispensable in addressing problem brought by climate change. On one hand, we need different stakeholders bringing broad knowledge, perspective to solve this complex issue. On the other hand, the central government should adjust the right direction.
According to Bohannon, the Nile Delta is sinking increasingly because of the excessive consumption of water of Nile River, sea erosion and dam building. Base on what we discussed above, there are two main principals for addressing the Nile Delta sinking:
1. Central Government should open the data and resources to relative stakeholders, which boost cooperation, participation from various stakeholders to address the problem. As ecosystem, Environmental relative issues is complex system requiring knowledge from different area.
2. Starting with small steps to test which solution is more suitable for Nile Delta than big projects. One of the biggest disadvantages of land use planning and strategy planning is using overall planning to solve the complex problem. Government favors this plan because they want to solve the problem as fast as possible. However, as Bohannon notes, the future condition of Nile Delta is unpredictable, unstable and turbulent. It’s impossible to solve this problem at once. We should begin with small experiments like changing irrigation system, learning new technology of water control to see the effectiveness instead of making big decision at once.
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