Welcome and introduction

Welcome and opening remarks, by project leader Island(er)s at the Helm Professor Ellen van Bueren (Delft University of Technology)     

Ellen van Bueren is professor of Urban Development Management at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, at Delft University of Technology. She studies how built or urbanized environments develop and change from an institutional perspective: how and why do various groups of actors involved enable or hinder change, and what governance arrangements and strategies could be supportive of decision-making. Her research is preferably of a trans-disciplinary nature, action-oriented and adopts an area-based approach (e.g. neighborhood, district, city region, island). In recent years she has focused on themes as sustainability, resilience and circularity. 

In the Islanders at the Helm project she has (co-)learned from and with the research team and islanders at Sint-Maarten, Saba, Curaçao and Bonaire on pressing climate challenges in the living environment of people, how they are experienced and perceived by islanders, and what possible risk mitigating strategies might be. In todays session we take you along through what we can learn from past and present climate challenges and the responses to these challenges in the past and present, and what we can learn from this for the future.