On 2 December 2025, SECORES and Join For Water organized together a ‘Water and Climate Café’ in Brussels. The focus was: “Too much, too little and too muddy water in the face of climate change: Stories of resilience from around the world”.
Climate change: in some places, it is cancelled; in others, people have grown tired of it. But everywhere, it is real. As a result of it, people and nature are confronted with too much, too little and too muddy water. But the good news is there are people across the world who do not look away. They take positive action to reduce the impacts of a changing climate on themselves, their neighbours, and their environment.
After opening words by Bart Dewaele, director of Join For Water who also made the link to the COP30 in Brasil in November 2025, 6 inspiring stories followed from different countries and by a wide range of organizations.
The first story was brought by Katrien Van Hooydonk. Katrien is Programme Manager for Digital Water & Soil Solutions at VITO. She has broad expertise in efficient water management and monitoring. She presented the Capitan Taki project was presented, co-financed by the Flemish Government as part of its international climate-finance commitments. The story highlighted that good monitoring and collaboration in data collection form an important basis to understand climate dynamics and resilience.
The second story was brought by Johan Slimbrouck. Johan is coordinator of the SECORES platform and a project advisor at Join For Water, where he supports programmes in Burundi and beyond. Drawing on his extensive experience, he shared insights from the Mono River floodplains in Benin, where climate-resilience projects are supported by DGD and the Flemish Government. In his visual presentation he showed how on the ground action and innovation for conservation and sustainable management of water resources can link to broader objectives for social-ecological resilience in this riverine landscape.
Next, we were happy to introduce Matthias Vanmaercke, who is Professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, KU Leuven. Being a geographer specialised in environmental hazards, he has recently co-led groundbreaking research on “urban gullies” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, published in Nature. In his story, Matthias introduced us to the scientific findings around these erosion processes and what it means for climate resilience.
The fourth story was brought by Vincent Henin. He is project Monitoring Officer at Louvain Coopération, which is one of the member organisations of SECORES. Vincent supports the implementation of international cooperation projects, including those focused on ecosystem restoration, natural resource management, and socio-ecological resilience. He brought us to the mangrove forests of West Africa and Madagascar, exploring how these critical ecosystems can contribute to long-term social-ecological resilience.
Indra Scheerlinck works at ENABEL as an expert in water and infrastructure. She has contributed to sustainable infrastructure and water-management projects. Her work underlines ENABEL’s mission to promote climate-resilient and socially relevant infrastructure solutions abroad.
Finally, the last story was told by Kim Vercruysse. She is the current programme coordinator at Join For Water. She took the audience to the wetlands in Uganda, where Join For Water support solutions for climate resilience in rural and urban areas with support from DGD, the Flemish government and the Conrad Hilton Foundation.
