Examples of Stakeholder Dialogues

^{Nanco Dolman speaks at UN climate change conference}

Nanco Dolman, Royal HaskoningDHV’s leading professional in water resilient cities, spoke at COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference. He was a member of a panel of specialists discussing Reimagining the future of water: how landscape-scale adaptation is driving the race to water resilience, organised by Anglian Water on 5 November 2021. Discussions included a focus on the significance of peatlands in combating climate change. Nanco talked about the experience from the Netherlands and components of an approach which can help protect and restore peatlands.

Referring to Nanco’s contribution, Peter Simpson (CEO Anglian Water) said: “We have had some fantastic feedback from our stakeholders and industry colleagues about how inspirational the event was, giving them an insight into what is possible when we all work together at a global level to share our learnings and incorporate best practices in order to adapt and thrive in the face of climate change. Your contribution to our event was excellent. I was pleased to have you as a panellist sharing your insights, especially with your long-standing relationship and understanding of the Fens through our shared work with the Dutch government. Your contributions on the crucial importance of preserving peatlands were particularly impactful.”

^{Smart ports in the UK}

In 2019, the UK Government laid out a 30-year vision for the maritime industry – called Maritime 2050 – with a strong focus on the potential of technology to improve the efficiency, sustainability and resilience of the country’s critical supply chains. This Maritime 2050 vision was well received by port authorities, but at Royal HaskoningDHV, we wanted to take it further and consider what practical steps could be taken to push forward the use of digital tools to bring to life these improvements to our industry. Our Smart Ports team, in partnership with Connected Places Catapult, took up the core technology themes from Maritime 2050 and used these as the basis for five use cases.

These use cases centred around real port challenges, making use of existing or soon-to-be feasible technologies in imaginative ways to overcome some typical challenges faced by ports. This included reduction in city truck congestion for ferry ports by using sensing technology for automated check-in, through to monitoring condition of vital marine assets in harsh sea conditions, along with the application of machine learning to guide cost-effective and timely road repairs in ports.  The imaginative use of existing technology tools can bring reduced environmental and operational impact of our port industry within the wider supply chains. The event to promote our use cases attracted over 300 attendees from across industry and pushed forward this important agenda.

Water shortages present increasing risks to communities and organisations. Due to the shared nature of the resource, cooperation across catchment areas is needed where supply is under stress. A framework created by the Alliance for Water Stewardship provides best practice on how this can be achieved. Unilever and Danone have set clear targets to increase performance on water stewardship at a global level as part of their corporate strategies.  

In Indonesia, we are working with various partners including the Alliance for Water Stewardship Indonesia to develop a good water stewardship plan for five Unilever sites and providing recommendations for a sustainable groundwater strategy for five Danone Aqua sites. All sites are in water-stressed basins in West Java. The plan and strategy will support the companies in improving their water stewardship performance at site and catchment levels, by following the principles based on the principles of the IAWS standard.

We signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with CPG Consultants in Singapore as part of an initiative to build local expertise in climate adaptation in the country. This is being done by facilitating knowledge transfer through collaboration with international partners. Together with other local and international specialists, we are pioneering solutions to strengthen Singapore’s climate resilience and position the country as a regional hub for climate change adaptation solutions. As part of the project, we are developing and applying the Dynamic Adaptive Pathways Planning method, for which we also produced a paper.

^{Knowledge transfer  and collaboration to improve Singapore's climate resilience}

^{Coastal erosion in Vietnam}

While there have been many studies looking at coastal erosion in Vietnam over the past decade, problems continue to rise. Our webinar entitled A Sustainable Approach to Overcoming Coastal Erosion in Vietnam brought together experts from various backgrounds to consider the main causes of the erosion and what can be done to address it in a sustainable way. This included how to avoid implementing emergency measures that result in much larger investment being required later.

^{Greenport congress}

Two of our Green Ports experts spoke at the GreenPort Congress held in Greece which brought together the global port community to exchange information on the latest in sustainable environmental practice. Our Green Ports Director, Caroline Price, addressed the Congress Stream of the conference with a session entitled The Road to Net Zero: Local Solutions to a Global Challenge. Her presentation highlighted some of the key gains that ports can achieve on a local level to reduce their carbon emissions. She published a blog exploring outcomes from this and related events in the Green Ports space. Also at the Congress, our Senior Consultant in Electrical Power and Energy, Alex Ruijs, delivered a session as part of the Powering Ports agenda. His presentation explored local renewable power generation and energy efficiency measures in smaller ports.

In the United Kingdom, we joined the Pledge to Net Zero, committing to science-based targets to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and help accelerate the transition to a net zero carbon economy. This involves UK level reporting on a sub-set of our environmental data.

In the Netherlands, we signed the manifesto for a level playing field for biobased construction materials (link in Dutch) and for an innovative and sustainable approach to replacing and renovating infrastructure (link in Dutch).

In 2021, a global contest for kids was organised in celebration of the 140^th anniversary of Royal HaskoningDHV. The kids were challenged to design the bridge of the future. A jury highlighted several inventive ideas.