Bilateral agreements with China
The Netherlands and China have maintained diplomatic relations for over 50 years. For over 30 of these years, the Netherlands and China have also cooperated specifically on the topics of water and climate adaptation.
This has been agreed upon in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Ministry of Water Resources in China and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management in the Netherlands. Because of its nature of technical knowledge development and exchange, Rijkswaterstaat has always managed this MoU.
The Netherlands and China can learn a lot from each other concerning the areas of water and climate adaptation. The most important bilateral cooperation topics focus on dike safety and flood forecasting. Within the topic of dike safety, we explore aspects such as monitoring methodologies, the impact of climate change on the stability of dikes, the failure mechanism piping and the approach to animal burrowing in dikes. Within the topic of flood forecasting, we do not only focus on forecasting floods, but address drought, probabilistic forecasting and impact-based forecasting as well.
Partners
Chinese partners with whom we share longstanding friendships include the Huai River Commission, Hohai University, the Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute (established by a Dutch civil engineer in the 1930s) and many more.