Witteveen+Bos, a leading Dutch engineering consultancy, has been awarded with the World Restoration Flagship Award by the United Nations for their ‘Building with Nature’ project on restoring the natural mangrove ecosystem in Demak, Indonesia.  

The ‘Building with Nature’ initiative is one of 10 pioneering efforts to be awarded the prestigious award. The recognized efforts involve using mangrove trees to form a natural barrier against the sea, helping protect the Indonesian coastline against erosion and flooding. This initiative was announced during the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Canada, earlier this month, where governments from around the world met to agree on a new set of goals for nature over the next decade. Talks are expected to include a potential global target for ecosystem restoration.

Indonesia is made up of 17,000 islands which are filled with mangrove forests, a haven for wildlife. Mangroves are an important feature of nature as they help shelter coastal communities from rising sea levels, along with storm surges, which are expected to become more frequent as the climate crisis sets in. In spite of this, many mangroves in Indonesia have been cut down to make space for fish farming. The ‘Building with Nature’ initiative in Demak seeks to restore the lost forests, provide coastal security and support the sustainable revitalisation of 6,000 ha of aquaculture ponds along a 20km shoreline. This is enhancing the safety, inclusive economic growth and self-reliance of 70,000 vulnerable people.

Mr. Rob van den Boomen, Managing Director of Witteveen+Bos in the Middle East, says  “As former MD of PT Witteveen+Bos Indonesia, with our highly committed and expert colleagues, we always strove to apply the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to our projects. These Nature Based Solutions are, when feasible, the best way to re-create a sustainable environment. The mangroves have a tremendous buffer capacity and form an enormous rich ecosystem. Controlled fishery and wood picking, in combination with creating alternative sources of income for the coastal inhabitants, secures a lifelong system. This can be applied on many more places.”    

Witteveen+Bos has been working on mangrove restoration for over 40 years. Further projects include Mangrove nurseries and rehabilitation in combination with large land reclamations in the Jakarta Bay and a mangrove plantation for carbon fixation for a Singapore based company.  In the United Arab Emirates, Witteveen+Bos EMEA DMCC is looking at ways to provide support for mangrove restoration and development, alongside the local governments and municipalities.

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This press release was sent out by:
Sarah Morris, Witteveen+Bos Communications Department
sarah.morris@witteveenbos.com

About ‘Building with Nature’ in Indonesia

This World Restoration Flagship is coordinated by the Indonesian Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries and the Indonesian Ministry of Public Work and Housing, Wetlands International and Ecoshape, with support from Witteveen+Bos, Deltares, TU Delft, Wageningen University & Research, UNESCO-IHE, Blue Forests, Kota Kita, Von Lieberman, the Diponegoro University, and local communities. This initiative is financially supported by: The Dutch Sustainable Water Fund on behalf of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) as part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI) and the Dutch Postcode Lottery. Link: UN recognizes Indonesian effort to restore mangrove forests with special award (decadeonrestoration.org)

About Witteveen+Bos

Witteveen+Bos provides consulting and engineering services in the fields of water, infrastructure, the environment and construction. With more than 1,400 employees, the firm focuses primarily on complex projects requiring advanced knowledge and an integrated approach. The multi-disciplinary approach, which involves intensive co-operation between specialists in different disciplines, is a key element of the way we work. Witteveen+Bos is characterised by its expertise, reliability and commitment. Witteveen+Bos has a unique ownership structure, with the shares wholly owned by its staff. Our clients are government agencies, private companies and alliances. They are served from the head office in Deventer, seven other Dutch offices, and foreign offices in Belgium, Dubai, Ghana, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Panama, Singapore, the United Kingdom and Vietnam. The Dubai office opened in 2014 to serve markets in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, where Witteveen+Bos has been active for over 25 years. Witteveen+Bos is part of a consortium of companies selected to design and construct the Netherlands Pavilion at the Expo 2020 in Dubai. Witteveen+Bos was responsible for the integral engineering, building physics and sustainable aspects of the Netherlands Pavilion at Expo 2020 in Dubai, which was open from 1 October 2021-31 March 2022.

For more information, please visit our website: https://www.witteveenbos.com/united-arab-emirates/

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