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Pier Vellinga | |
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| Born | April 17, 1950 |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Alma mater | Delft University of Technology, Ph.D., 1984 |
| Occupation | Climate change expert |
| Employer(s) | Wageningen University, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
| Board member of | Royal Dutch Institute for Sea Research, Urgenda |
Pier Vellinga (April 17, 1950) is an environmental scientist and one of the Netherlands' experts on the impacts of climate change.
He was among the first scientists to publish on climate change and its implications regarding water and energy in the eighties. His education and training includes a Fulbright scholarship in the US in 1967–68, an Msc (1976) and doctors degree at Delft University of Technology (1984).
His 1986 environmental science PhD on Beach Erosion and Dune Erosion During Storm provided the basis for the coastal safety evaluation (the Dutch Delta Plan).
In 1988, in a newly created position, he became advisor to the Minister of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment on the issue of Climate Change and the development of international CO2 policies. In this role he was key negotiator during the Netherlands EU-presidency of 1988. He was also one of the experts of the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases. For this advisory body he also chaired with Peter Gleick the “Targets and Indicators of Climatic Change” working group.
In 1991, Vellinga published an article [1] with Robert Swart that became a cornerstone in the definition of the 2 °C target, than adopted by UNFCCC COP 15 in Copenhagen in 2009. This article also proposed for the first time a traffic-light visualization - based on red, yellow, green colours - that since then has been largely employed in risk management and climate change communication. In 1991/1992 he was one of the architects of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and in 1989 was actively involved in setting up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as vice chairman in its first bureau. He was as an author of various IPCC chapters (the work of the IPCC, including the contributions of many scientists, was recognised by the joint award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize).
From 1995 to 1998 he combined his work as director of the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (a position which he held from 1991 to 2001) with a part-time position at the World Bank, United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as Chairman of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF). From 1991 to 2006 he has been a professor of earth sciences at the Vrije Universiteit. Joyeeta Gupta, Richard Tol, Robert Swart and Hasse Goosen were among his first PhD students. He is Professor in Climate Change and Water Safety at Wageningen University. [2]
In 2009 he initiated the international Delta Alliance, a collaboration among low-lying coastal areas in the world vulnerable to climate change. This initiative is still going on.
As of 2009, Vellinga is the chairman of the Knowledge for Climate research program and vice chairman of the Climate Changes Spatial Planning program. These programs support the Dutch government and companies with operational knowledge required for investment decisions related to climate change adaptation and mitigation. He has a chair in Climate and Water at Wageningen University (WUR), where he is director of the Wageningen University climate program, and has a part-time chair in Societal Impacts of Climate Change at the Institute of Environmental Studies of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
In 2003 he presented the Erasmus Liga Lecture on Climate Change and the safety of the Netherlands. This triggered national debate on the vulnerability of the Netherlands with regard to flooding and the need to update the Delta Plan. He was advisor to the second Delta Committee (2008) on sea level rise and coastal protection.
He is a member of the “Uffizio di Piano”, a high level committee of scientists and policy makers charged by the Italian prime minister to supervise the high water protection and lagoon rehabilitation works in Venice. He is also a member of the supervisory board of the FMO-Bank (finance and development)
At a national level he is chairman of the board of the Royal Dutch Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and a member of the Energy Transition - Creative Energy platform. Lastly he is a member of the board of Urgenda.
As of 2020 [update] , Vellinga has published 28 scientific papers. [3] In addition, he has more than 100 articles as author or co-author in books, scientific reports and proceedings of a more general nature. He has frequently appeared in news media and participated in several interviews and scientific documentaries made by national and international broadcasting cooperation's including BBC, ABC, CNN and Discovery. In August 2009, the Dutch weekly Elsevier choose him as the no. 1 climate alarmist of the Netherlands. [4]
Vellinga's views on climate change are set out in his SID-lecture from 2008 and his 2008 inaugural lecture "Hoogtij in de Delta" at Wageningen UR.
The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being the University of Amsterdam (UvA). The literal translation of the Dutch name Vrije Universiteit is "Free University". "Free" refers to independence of the university from both the State and the Dutch Reformed Church. Both within and outside the university, the institution is commonly referred to as "the VU". Although founded as a private institution, the VU has received government funding on a parity basis with public universities since 1970. The university is located on a compact urban campus in the southern Buitenveldert neighbourhood of Amsterdam and adjacent to the modern Zuidas business district.
Roger A. Pielke Jr. is an American political scientist and professor, and was the director of the Sports Governance Center within the Department of Athletics at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Bert Metz is a Dutch climate policy expert. He was co-chair of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group III on mitigation on climate change for the third and fourth assessment report of the IPCC. Currently, he is a fellow at the European Climate Foundation.
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Richard S. J. Tol is a professor of economics at the University of Sussex. He is also professor of the economics of climate change at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is a member of the Academia Europaea.
The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) is a report on climate change created with the help of a large number of contributors, both scientists and governmental representatives. There has been considerable political controversy over a small number of errors found in the report, and there have been calls for review of the process used to formulate the report. The overwhelming majority view of scientists with expertise in climate change is that errors, when found, are corrected, and the issues as identified do not undermine the conclusions of the report that the climate system is warming in response to increased levels of greenhouse gases, largely due to human activities.
Louis Victor Allis is a Dutch computer scientist working in the artificial intelligence (AI) field. In his graduate work, he revealed AI solutions for Connect Four, Qubic, and Gomoku. His dissertation introduced two new game search techniques: proof-number search and dependency-based search. Proof-number search has seen further successful application in computer Go tactical search and many other games.
Martijn Bernard Katan is a Dutch nutritionist, an emeritus professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and author of two popular science books on nutrition.
The Research School for Socio-Economic and Natural Sciences of the Environment is a joint venture for integrated environmental and sustainability research and multidisciplinary PhD training in the Netherlands. The school was accredited by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) during 1997–2006, was not accredited during 2007, and in 2007 had applied for reaccreditation by a revamped KNAW successor. It was reacccredited in 2008 and 2014. In 2007 the program listed 80 Ph.D. courses.
Corina Brussaard is a leading scientist for Antarctic viral ecology working for the Royal Institute of Sea Research (NIOZ) and is a Special Professor of Viral Ecology at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics of the University of Amsterdam (UvA).
Hendrik Jacob (Jaap) van den Herik is a Dutch computer scientist, and professor at the University of Leiden, known for his contribution in the fields of computer chess and artificial intelligence.
Universiteiten van Nederland (UNL), previously Vereniging van Universiteiten until November 2021, is a trade group of government-funded research universities, including three special universities, and the Open University of the Netherlands. It formed as the Vereniging van Samenwerkende Nederlandse Universiteiten in 1985, as a successor to the Academische Raad.
Carolyn Fischer is an environmental economist. She was born in Ontario, later moving to the United States. She is a senior fellow for Resources for the Future, as well as being a Canada 150 Research Chair in Climate Economics, Innovation, and Policy. She is also a professor of environmental and natural resource economics at Vrije Universiteit-Amsterdam.
Sybe Schaap is a Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. He has been Senator since 12 July 2007 till 11 July 2019, doing water, agriculture, foreign affairs and European Union affairs. For example, he arranged a majority in favor of the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement in the Dutch parliament.
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Adriaan Hendrik"Ad"Stouthamer was a Dutch microbiologist. He was a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam from the 1960s to 1996. His research was mostly focused on the metabolism of microbiological cultures.
The Netherlands is already affected by climate change. The average temperature in the Netherlands rose by more than 2 °C from 1901 to 2020. Climate change has resulted in increased frequency of droughts and heatwaves. Because significant portions of the Netherlands have been reclaimed from the sea or otherwise are very near sea level, the Netherlands is very vulnerable to sea level rise.
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Joyeeta Gupta is a Dutch environmental scientist who is professor of Environment and Development in the Global South at the University of Amsterdam, professor of Law and Policy in Water Resources and Environment at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, and co-chair of the Earth Commission, set up by Future Earth and supported by the Global Challenges Foundation. She was co-chair of UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook-6 (2016-2019), published by Cambridge University Press, which was presented to governments participating in the United Nations Environment Assembly in 2019. She is a member of the Amsterdam Global Change Institute. She was awarded the Association of American Publishers PROSE award for Environmental Science and the 2023 Spinoza Prize.
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