to increase the size of the river floodplains, allowing them to revert to
natural forest and marshland. Another 62,000 acres of pastures will
be earmarked as huge temporary storage pools for floodwaters. Land-
use practices on another 185,000 acres of farmland will be changed so
they can tolerate soggy conditions in winter and spring. “It’s a more
complicated approach, but our future as a society will be much safer,”
says Peter Glas of Delft Hydraulics. “If the big flood comes isn’t it bet-
ter to have a meter (3.2 feet) of water in your house then to have six
meters (19.6 feet) over your rooftop?”
But in the densely populated Netherlands, sacrificing land will not
be easy. Some towns and villages will be told that they cannot build
new infrastructure because their surroundings will be given back to
the rivers in the coming decades. Dutch engineers are trying to find
ways to minimize the dislocations, and even exploring ways to make
use of areas that will in times of high water be allowed to flood. One
company, Dura Vermeer, has even designed giant floating green-
houses, commercial parks, and towns that could be stationed in such
places. In early 2003, the company was raising capital to build an enor-
mous 123-acre floating greenhouse complex near Schiphol Airport, a
prototype for future projects in other parts of the world threatened by
similar global-warming-related flooding issues. “This could be the
future for many countries,” says van der Sommen.
Dura Vermeer is not the only European company that is adapting
itself to a climate-altered future. Two huge European oil conglomer-
ates—BP and Royal Dutch Shell—broke with their U.S. counterparts
in 1997 when they pulled out of the Global Climate Change Coalition,
a corporate alliance that has lobbied to block meaningful action on
curbing greenhouse emissions. Shell, which is based in both London
and The Hague, now says global warming is real and is investing $500
million in solar energy and biomass operations. London-based BP
intends to cut its own greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent from
1990 levels by the year 2010, twice the target agreed upon at Kyoto and
later rejected by the United States. “We’ve moved—as the psycholo-
gists would say—beyond denial,” BP chief executive John Browne said
of the company’s about-face at the time.
30 Colin Woodard