In 1986 I was appointed head of the Advisory Branche of RIKZ, a division of RIKZ with 100 staff, supporting policy development for the Dutch government for coastal and marine management. In this function I was responsible for the preparation of a new Dutch coastal management policy, adopted by the government in 1990. This policy implied a change from hard coastal defence measures to soft measures – implemented by an annual sand nourishment scheme for maintaining the Dutch coastline. This policy is still actual today, with a shift from beach nourishments to shoreface nourishments.

At the end of the 1980ies I became involved in the work of IPCC. I co-organised two international IPCC conferences in Miami (1990) and Perth (1991) and coordinated the drafting of the IPCC report on Coastal Zone Management. In 2004 I renewed my participation to IPCC as review editor of the chapter on Coastal Zones of the 4th Assessment Report.

From 1991 till 2000 I was member of the Programme Committee of the Dutch National Global Change Research Programme and co-editor of Change, the Netherlands Journal on Climate Change.

In 1994 I was invited to become member of the Dutch LOICZ Committee. I was chairman of the session on Coastal Management at the 2nd International LOICZ Conference, Noordwijkerhout and key-note speaker at the first conference on European Land-Ocean Interaction Studies in Archachon. In the same year I was invited at the biennial BORDOMER conference as panel member at the closing session.

In 1996 I became chairman of the European Coastal Inter Science Network, CISNET, established by the Marine Board of the European Science Foundation. In this function I organised in 1997 the Euroconference on Transdisciplinary Coastal Management Research in San Feliu de Guixols (Spain) and edited the conference proceedings. From 1998 I was during a few years co-editor of the Journal on Regional Environmental Change and from 2000 co-editor of the Journal of Coastal Conservation.

In 1999 I was invited at the Dahlem Conference on Science and Coastal Management as chairman/convenor of the chapter on Shoreline Development. I also spent a few weeks as guest professor at the University of Kiel for a short lecture course on Integrated Coastal Management. The next year I was chairman of the session on Impacts of Science on Coastal Management at the EU Conference on Science and Technology in Hamburg.

In 2001 I contributed to the outline of a proposal for the EU Coastal Policy Project EUROSION; this proposal was selected for funding and I acted during the first year as Project-director. In 2002 I was invited as member of the evaluation panel of the UK governmental Foresight Project on Flood Protection and Coastal Defence.

In 2002 I initiated the establishment of a European Network on Coastal Research, ENCORA (www.ENCORA.org ). This European Network links National Coastal Networks in 13 European countries and 10 Thematic Networks on specific coastal issues, which are broadly shared by many coastal nations. This initiative was submitted for funding to the 6th EU Framework Programme in 2004 and it has been selected for funding from 2005 till 2008.

Publications