ing against the sea and rivers could run as high as $25 billion. “These
are enormous figures if you had to spend them all at once, but we’re
able to spread it out over 50 or 100 years,” de Ronde points out. (Over
the course of this century, the Dutch might well spend that much
maintaining their comprehensive system of bike paths.) The rein-
forcements and modifications around Amsterdam and other major
cities are designed to withstand the combined effects of sea-level rise
and the most powerful storm one would expect to encounter in a
10,000-year period.
What has Dutch engineers most worried most is not rising seas,
but a change in the weather.
Climate models suggest that rainfall in this region of Europe may
increase by 5 to 10 percent, while many glaciers in the Alps will melt
away. That may not sound like much, but all that extra water represents
a serious threat to the Netherlands, which sits smack in the middle of
the Rhine River’s flood-prone delta. Much of the meltwater of the Swiss
Alps eventually winds up in Holland, as does most of the rain falling
in Switzerland, western Germany, Luxembourg, and interior Belgium.
For centuries, the Dutch have built dikes to keep the river at bay.
As their land continued to slowly sink, the Dutch have built their dikes
higher and higher. But by doing so, the consequences of a breach of a
dike have become ever more serious. In 1995, the Rhine almost
breached its banks, forcing a quarter million people to evacuate their
homes. The prospect of more frequent floods and ever-higher seas has
given water managers pause. Maybe, many have concluded, building
ever-higher dikes is no longer the best solution.
“There are flood plains that are inhabited that should not be,” says
Jeroen van der Sommen, managing director of the Delft-based
Netherlands Water Partnership, which promotes Dutch expertise over-
seas. “We have to change our thinking and say, ‘If you don’t want to get
your feet wet, you need to get out!’”
Rather than building levees higher to deal with global warming,
the new strategy will give the rivers more room, allowing them to flow
and flood more naturally rather than trying to force them into artificial
channels.
Under the plan, 222,000 acres of land will be surrendered by 2050
Europe 29