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This is the Big Five, the companion series to the podcast Water Talks, with five one-on-one interviews with some of the extraordinary speakers from the main episodes. This is a conversation with Rohit Aggarwala, the Chief Climate Officer of New York City and the commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection. He trained as a historian and worked as a journalist and as a consultant at McKinsey before going to work for the former Mayor Bloomberg as the head of the office of long-term Planning and Sustainability.He is deeply invested in using storm protection measures to not just build walls, but to make the city a better place for the people who live there, to give the city what he calls ‘a livable waterfront’. I spoke with him about the city’s sewers, about making the city more resilient with measures ranging from seawalls to rain gardens, and about the water around New York, which has gotten so clean that there are even dolphins swimming in it.LINKS:ROHIT AGGARWALAPlanNYC
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Episode Notes
This is the Big Five, the companion series to the podcast Water Talks, with five one-on-one interviews with some of the extraordinary speakers from the main episodes.
This is a conversation with Kate Orff. She has her own studio, Scape, and is a professor at Columbia University in New York. Time Magazine called her one of the 100 most important people of 2023. She coined the term ‘Oyster-Tecture’, a method of using oyster shells to create ‘living breakwaters’ that not only help clean the water of New York Harbor, but also will help calm the waves during the next superstorm.You can hear her in episode 4 of Water Talks, ‘Too Dirty’. This is the longer version of my interview with her during the New York Water Week and the UN Water conference in 2023.
LINKS: KATE ORFF
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Episode Notes
Shownotes:This is the Big Five, the companion series to the podcast Water Talks, with five one-on-one interviews with some of the extraordinary speakers from the main episodes.
Matthijs Bouw is a Dutch architect and urban designer who has lived in New York now for eight years. With his studio One Architecture he is working on ‘The Big U’, ten miles of infrastructure works around the tip of Manhattan which are not only meant to protect the island from storms, but also to provide the local communities with valuable public space. In addition, Matthijs is a professor of climate resilience at Penn University and the first Rockefeller Urban Resilience Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation.You can hear him in episode 2 of Water Talks, ‘Too Much’. This is the longer version of my interview with him during the New York Water Week and the UN Water conference in 2023.Links:Matthijs BouwThe Big U Project
"Image Credit: Rebuild by Design/The BIG Team.”
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Episode Notes
This is the Big Five, the companion series to the podcast Water Talks, with one-on-one interviews with some of the extraordinary speakers from the main episodes.This is a conversation with Russell Shorto. He is an American writer and a historian, a former director of the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam AND the author of ‘The Island at the Center of the World’, about New York in the seventeenth century when it was the Dutch colony New Amsterdam. He recently founded the New Amsterdam Project, under the auspices of the New York Historical Society.For the podcast ‘Water Talks’ he walked me, Tracy Metz, through 17th century New York - or rather, New Amsterdam - and told me about the city’s intimate relationship with the water around it.You can hear him in episode 2 of Water Talks, ‘Too Much’. This is the longer version of my interview with him during the New York Water Week and the UN Water conference in 2023.Links:Russell ShortoNew Amsterdam Project
"Image Credit: Rebuild by Design/The BIG Team.”
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This is the Big Five, the companion series to the podcast Water Talks, with one-on-one interviews with some of the extraordinary speakers from the main episodes.This is a conversation with ‘Mister Water’ himself: Henk Ovink.He was influential in shaping planning and water policy in the Netherlands, but he really made his name as a member of the task force Obama created in response to Hurricane Sandy. For the past eight years, he has been the Netherlands’ special envoy for International Water Affairs. This is a big moment for him: he worked for a long time to organize the first UN conference on water in almost 50 years, together with Tajikistan. It was the high point of his time as Special Envoy, and it marks the end of his term.You can hear him in episode 1 of Water Talks, ‘Too Close for Comfort’. This is the longer version of my interview with him during the New York Water Week and the UN Water conference in 2023.Links: Henk Ovink
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Episode Notes
This episode is about the tension between water as a source of profit and water as a basic human right. After all, if clean water has to be profitable, some people, lots of people, are sure to lose out. As the director of UN Habitat, Maimounah Mohd Sharif is dedicated to helping the global south get access to clean water and sanitation.Do we need big business to build the big infrastructure that brings clean water to everyone? Thad Pawlowski of Columbia University and ‘constructive activist’ Murtah Shannon of Both Ends say: absolutely not.This show is about climate justice. That’s why this fifth episode of Water Talks is called: Too Unequal.Links:Maimunah Mohd SharifThaddeus PawlowskiMurtah ShannonHenk Ovink
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Episode Notes
There is less and less potable water on the planet and what we do have is getting dirtier and dirtier. We’ve let ourselves ruin this essential resource in the name of profit, or carelessness. The Netherlands is good at keeping the water out, but Europe puts us at the bottom of its league when it comes to the quality of rivers and lakes. According to the ministry, this is mainly because the Netherlands – as opposed to other European countries – measures the water quality almost everywhere. And when you measure more, you see more. In the last decades, the Netherlands has improved the water quality of its rivers and lakes, but the Dutch government still believes that more effort is needed.In this week’s episode, called “Too Dirty”, we meet people who are raising the red flag, such as Li An Phoa of the drinkable rivers movement and the Dutch minister of Infrastructure and Water Management Mark Harbers - in New York he called on business to clean up its act! And did you know that oysters are fantastic water filters? They’re cleaning up New York Harbor as we speak, thanks to the Billion Oyster Project, an idea based on landscape architect Kate Orff’s ideas about ‘Oyster-Tecture’.Links:Li An PhoaKate OrffKatie Mosher Billion Oyster Project (The Billion Oyster Project)Dennis van PeppenMark Harbers (in Dutch)Kirsten van Santen (in Dutch)
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Too little water is a problem that directly affects our survival as a species. That’s why the Dutch artist Rene van Engelenburg built the Water Arch, a carnival ride that shows, in the most fun way possible, just how much water we waste.But too little contact with water, taking it for granted and turning it into a commodity, is how we got into this predicament in the first place. Just ask Native-American tribal leader Austin Nuñez from Arizona, or Palestinian water engineer Reeta Samamqa. For them too little water is their everyday reality. And American environmental performance artist Sarah Cameron Sunde reconnects us with water… literally!Links:René van Engelenburg DropstuffIndigenous Environmental NetworkPalestine Water AuthoritySarah Cameron Sunde
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Episode Notes
It was the water that made Manhattan a desirable place already for the Dutch in the 17th century. Writer and historian Russell Shorto brings that story to life during a walk through what was once New Amsterdam. It was that same water that almost drowned the city when Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012. In a twist of history, Sandy brought the Dutch back. Special envoy for international water affairs Henk Ovink was instrumental in bringing about the UN Conference on water, hosted by the Netherlands and Tajikistan. And architect and urban designer Matthijs Bouw is designing new infrastructure to repair and prepare New York for the next storm. Flood protection the Dutch way, with not just concrete walls but with green public spaces and parks and promenades, all built with American go-get-it-ness.LINKS:Russell Shorto Matthijs BouwEast Side Coastal Resiliency ProjectThe Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan
UN Water Conference"Image Credit: Rebuild by Design/The BIG Team.”
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Episode Notes
No, the UN Water Conference and the New York Water Week held in March of 2023 did not provide a silver bullet to solve the world’s water problems: too much, too little, too dirty and too unequal. (Not that anyone really expected that…) But yes, they did raise the world’s awareness of how acute the water emergency is.New York is giving a good example. In 2012 Hurricane Sandy got much too close for comfort. Ten years on, the city is moving ahead to recover and prepare for what is yet to come. And come it will. In this first episode of Water Talks, ‘Too close for comfort’, we speak with King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, New York City Chief Climate Officer Rit Aggarwala and students at the Pratt Institute in New York who are creating a resilient future with design’s newest tool: Artificial Intelligence.LINKS:UN Water ConferenceNew York Water WeekDutch Ministry of Infrastructure &Water Management
NYC Chief Climate OfficerPratt Institutewww.tracymetz.nl | www.nattigheid.nl"Image Credit: Rebuild by Design/The BIG Team.”
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