Delta Life 9

8 DELTARES, APRIL 2018 land subsidence, extreme weather: challenges that everyone agrees that we should take on. Whether you are a democrat or a republican. It doesn't matter.' Cross-party agreement of this kind is exceptional. How do you achieve that? 'Louisiana has been at the forefront of climate change for decades: everything happens to us first. Elsewhere in the Golf, coastal communities have just started adjusting; we have already had casualties here. The original inhabitants of Ile de Jean Charles, which is now hardly more than a strip of land in the middle of the coastal marshes, are going to move from their ancestral land. The New York Times has described them as the first American climate refugees. On top of the heartbreak involved, the entire project will cost $48 million. Fortunately, more and more people are becoming aware that waiting for things to go wrong is a lot more expensive and more painful than looking for long-term solutions pro- actively.' A lot has happened since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Is it hard to maintain a sense of urgency more than ten years later? 'Superstorms are a problem but our daily lives are affected more by what we call "inconvenience floods" owing to heavy rainfall and high water. They don't even make it into the papers. There are rarely casualties but you can't get to school, the hospital, to work or the supermarket. Or you have to make long detours. We are evaluating all the time, and after every flood: how can we improve preparations for the next?' Can coastal communities still be saved? 'Yes. The story is different for every coastal community: some will survive thanks to technical changes; others will have to be housed elsewhere. We have developed a toolbox with solutions ranging from building with nature, changes to housing and infrastructure, and moving to other locations. Whatever the selected solution, we believe that local support is extremely important here. The Governor of Louisiana has visited many coastal communities to talk about what can be done and to get as many people as possible involved in developing solutions. We have a team of social scientists at the institute to support this work and to arrive at more complete solutions in a scientific way. In addition, we called in a leading expert, the former chief resiliency officer and deputy mayor of New Orleans, Jeff Herbert, to advise us about how to help coastal communities and find the best ways of adapting to changing conditions.' TheWater Institute works with government, the public, and the oil and gas industry. How difficult is that? 'Some people can permit themselves the luxury of refusing to talk to the oil and gas industry. We are pragmatic and we see shared interests. For example, we are now working with Chevron, Shell and other companies to improve protection from high water and storms for Port Fourchon. That involves the creation of new coastal marshes that will protect the infrastructure and limit flood risks in an area of up to sixty kilometres land inwards. We like to think of this as protecting everything that lives and works on the coast. And let's face it: there are a lot of jobs in the oil and gas industry. We think in terms of solutions that keep the economy running and that include plenty of nature, employment and security.' TheWater Institute is working more and more outside the state. What is your biggest strength in worldwide terms? 'Building with nature and balancing multiple interests at the same time. The biggest compliment we received when we celebrated our fifth jubilee was that we work hard on managing a complete delta in a way that is unique in the world. It's not our ambition to get very big: we believe in working together worldwide and sharing the best knowledge. That is why we are so pleased that we can work as partners with organisations like Deltares.' How far can we get with modern computer models? Can we take everybody's interests into account? 'We explain the calculations; we don't make decisions. We can make increasingly accurate forecasts but the biggest challenge remains to make those difficult decisions together. That's what politics is for.'  'We lose a football field every 100 minutes here.'