In a Strategic Reversal, Dutch Embrace Floods

Natural disasters have a way of shattering complacency. Earthquakes bring new building codes; hurricanes prompt evacuation planning. But what about a disaster that unfolds over 50 or 100 years? Sea level rise accompanying global warming is one such gradual peril, leading low-lying coastal countries to worry: How do you get people to focus on an enormous but slow-moving threat?

That's a problem now facing Holland, forcing Dutch leaders to rethink their thousand-year strategy of fighting back the water that threatens them.

To understand the history of the Dutch battle against water, talk to Geert Mak. He's a writer by trade, but more generally he's someone who thinks deeply about topics. And he's thought a lot about the Dutch relationship with water. Mak is every bit the urban intellectual, but he also maintains a rural hideaway in Friesland in northern Holland. That's where I caught up with him.

According to Mak, Holland's many ditches and canals are not just scenery. They're a critical part of the manmade drainage system that keeps this soggy country from filling up like a bathtub. Pointing out the window of his modern farmhouse, Mak indicates the flat fields stretching off to the horizon. "This is pancake country," he says.

When the Romans were here 2,000 years ago, they figured out that making a bit of high ground to build your house on would keep you dry when the flood waters came in. Since then, Mak says, the Dutch have constantly worked to protect themselves from high water. And yet Mak says something puzzling is now happening in the Netherlands. He says people seem to believe that only poor low-lying countries like Bangladesh are going to be affected by the sea level rise that will come with global warming.

"I am amazed all the time," he says. "Because we are a very rich Bangladesh, we are a very modern Bangladesh, we have an enormous amount of technology. But we are a kind of Bangladesh. And we are one of the first victims of the climate changes."

It's as if the Dutch have tuned out the threat climate change. The Dutch people, Mak says, "have the idea it's far away, while it is really at their door. They're sleeping. They're sleeping."The Maeslant barrier, at the Hook of Holland, is the final piece of the overhaul launched 50 years ago. It's a massive flood gate not far from where the Maas River meets the North Sea. "You can compare it with two gigantic doors," Dutch water official Jos Kuypers says. "One on the north side of the river, and one of the south side of the river."

When a storm causes the North Sea to rise, the doors will swing shut, closing off the river and keeping the water out. According to Kuypers, this will protect Rotterdam and all the small, low-lying towns nearby.

And it's easy to believe him. Standing below this giant steel structure, you get the feeling that it could withstand almost anything nature could throw at it. Even people who lived through the flood of '53 can feel safe now.

But that's a problem, Erik Boessenkool says, because "most people in the Netherlands rarely think about the fact that they are living below sea level, or in a sensitive area."

Boessenkool works with the water ministry's planning office in The Hague. He says the dams and barriers that were built after the '53 flood might be adequate if it were still 1953, but today there's something more insidious to worry about. He describes this threat in six words, give or take: "Climate change, climate change and climate change."

If the Dutch people have tuned out the problem of climate change, the Dutch government has not. And for an American journalist like me, it'sunusual to hear a government official more worried about climate change than the general public."One of the issues that we will have to deal with in the coming years is to create some sense of urgency," Boessenkool says. "But we don't want to stir panic." He isn't sure how to do that, but he says it's essential, because the government is changing its strategy for dealing with water, and it's a change that will make people uncomfortable.

Geert Mak says this idea of letting the water go where it wants is going to take getting used to. The Dutch are used to taming nature, he says. "But now, they have to accept retreat. And give part of the country back to the water. Because it is better. Because it is more clever."

And because climate change will force them to anyway.

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