ALTERRA

Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen Environmental Research (Alterra) (WUR) is a collaboration between Wageningen University and eleven research institutes that are combined under the legal entity DLO Foundation (Stichting DLO). The mission of Wageningen UR is ‘To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life’. A staff of 6,500 employees and 10,000 students from over 100 countries work in the domain of healthy food and living environment for governments and the business community-at-large. The strength of Wageningen UR lies in its ability to combine efforts of the various fields of natural and social sciences. The union of expertise leads to scientific breakthroughs that can quickly be put into practice and be incorporated into education. This is the Wageningen Approach. The scientific quality of Wageningen UR is affirmed by the prominent position it occupies in international rankings and citation indexes.
The domain of Wageningen UR consists of three related core areas:
• Food and food production
• Living environment
• Health, lifestyle and livelihood
A large number of lecturers, researchers and other employees are based at Wageningen Campus. Wageningen UR also has branches all over The Netherlands and abroad.

Alterra is one of the research institutes of the DLO Foundation. Alterra offers a combination of practical, innovative and interdisciplinary scientific research across many disciplines related to the green world and the sustainable use of the living environment. Aspects of the environment that Alterra focuses on are soil, water, the atmosphere, the landscape and biodiversity ‒ on a global scale as well as regionally, from the Dutch polders to the Himalaya’s and from Amsterdam to the Arctic.

To meet the environmental challenges of today and tomorrow, the focus on science allows Alterra to unite many skills in teams of subject specialists. About 400 staff members are divided over 11 teams, each focused on a particular topic to develop innovative solutions that are practical, efficient and cost-effective. Alterra executes research in the field of flora and fauna, soil, water, climate, vegetation, land cover and land use, the use of geo-information and remote sensing, environmental risk assessment, landscape and spatial planning, forestry, recreation and governance. Furthermore Alterra develops four strategic interdisciplinary themes: Green Economic Growth, Green Cities, Green Climate Solutions and Food Security. These represent our view of the most important problems facing twenty-first century society.

Alterra engages in integrated research to support design processes, policy-making and management at local, national and international levels. It provides consultancy and advisory services, matching environmental expertise to the needs of society, policymakers, academia, industry, government and the research community. Alterra works in close cooperation with Wageningen University and focuses on strategic and applied research, which makes its work both scientifically sound and practically applicable.

Alterra clients and partners are large and small, international and national organisations, governments and companies. The client and partner list includes the European Commission, the Dutch Government and the World Bank, APP, Heineken, WWF, BASF, Arcadis, Rabobank, UNEP and many others. Among Alterra’s national and international partners are the Partnership for European Environmental Research (PEER), Global Water Partnership (GWP), World Water Council (WWC), Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP), Landscape Europe, Climate Change and Biosphere (CCB), the European Centre for Nature Conservation (ECNC), the European Forest Institute (EFI).

Judith Klostermann

Judith Klostermann is a senior researcher on governance of adaptation to climate change. She is designing, executing and leading research projects in the domains of adaptation to climate change, coastal management, environment and sustainability. Her main fields of expertise are policy science, governance, social institutions and public administration, social construction theory, perceptions and anthropological research methods, and stakeholder involvement. She is working within the CALM team of Wageningen UR- Alterra on several projects, for example, the organization of Communities of Practice in European projects on urban climate change. Some other topics of her research are stakeholder involvement in the Dutch Delta Program, characteristics of transdisciplinary research, negotiation of uncertainties in the freshwater/saline water debate, and adaptive capacity of social institutions. In 2003 she acquired a PhD with a dissertation titled ‘Social Construction of Sustainability in Drinking Water Companies’. Between 1990 and 1998 she worked for TNO Environmental consultancy in Delft and Apeldoorn. She has a Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Utrecht.

Channah Betgen

Channah Betgen is a junior researcher climate change and adaptation at Alterra, Wageningen UR, The Netherlands. She is working in the Horizon 2020 URBANFLUXES project on methods of user interactions in preparation for setting up Communities of Practice for three case studies in London, Basel and Heraklion. In the EU Seventh framework programme CLIPC project she is assisting in the work package on user consultation, by setting up and evaluating surveys, interviews and workshops. Furthermore she works on the Dutch spatial adaptation portal for the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment and Knowledge for Climate by creating content and managing user involvement during the creation of the portal (www.spatialadaptation.com). In 2012 she acquired an MSc Earth Sciences from the Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She did a major in Applied Environmental Geosciences and minors in Science Journalism and GIS. She also has an MSc in Environment and Resource Management (Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2011) with a major in Climate and Water and minors in Environmental, climate and water policy.