A deluge of Dutch courage

The Sydney Morning Herald, December 5, 2009

MAESLANT STORM SURGE BARRIER

While the rest of the world argues, the Netherlands is poised for a $1.6 billion-a-year, 100-year program to ''climate proof" the nation. Paola Totaro reports.

On the windswept beaches of the Netherlands, the low growl of earthmoving machinery is as much part of the scene as the mournful cry of gulls. Joggers skirt giant pipes as sand dredged deep from the bed of the North Sea is disgorged to plump up the surrounding dunes.

At Ter Heijde, a tiny resort town in South Holland, avenues of ''seafront'' village houses nestle behind the protective barrier of a phalanx of dunes. It is a striking example of how 9 million people are able to live on the coast of a nation where vast tracts are below sea level.

Water, of course, is in the genes of the Dutch. For centuries it brought great wealth as the little seafaring nation explored and colonised the new world. At Kinderdijk in the south-west, 19 windmills still stand nearly 300 years after they were built to pump excess water from low-lying land back into the River Lek.

VOC Route (source: Batavia Werf)

But water also spawned its greatest tragedy in 1953 when a storm surge burst through the dykes, killing close to 2000 people and devastating vast stretches of the nation.

Now, as world leaders descend on Copenhagen in a seemingly doomed struggle to secure international agreement on global warming, the Dutch have shot ahead of the pack, managing to design, debate and harness funding for a revolutionary $1.6 billion a year, 100-year project to ''climate proof'' their nation.

Nailed down in less than two years, the speed of domestic consensus is astounding. But what is most fascinating about the Dutch model is that its architects - scientists working hand-in-hand with politicians, business leaders, activists and the populace - have carefully up-ended the catastrophic view of climate change to one laden with possibilities, a catalyst for innovation and improvement.

In the Netherlands, adaptation and ''building with nature'' has become the key to climate change response.

''We have seen this remarkable development in Holland over the last five or six years where climate issues suddenly moved from threat and doom and gloom to an opportunity as an additional impulse for innovation,'' says Pavel Kabat, professorial head of Wageningen University's Earth System Science and Climate Centre.

Kabat, the chairman of Dutch National Climate Research, has been a pioneer in climate research for 25 years and a key player in the radical approach that has challenged the Dutch public to seize opportunities presented by risk.

''It seems very simple but it is not because it breaks a lot of the old-established thinking. … can you imagine saying to the generation who suffered the floods of the 1950s that we will take the dam down and go with nature?" he told the Herald.

Kabat says the Netherlands has developed floating houses, local companies are investing in salt-tolerant agriculture and experimental work is under way with floating greenhouses in the horticulture sector. ''These, too, have been developed entirely to cope with climate change,'' he says.

''I think that swap in attitude - from threat to opportunity - took on board a lot of private business interest immediately. This was very important for the momentum in which the Government then came and [embraced] the Delta committee report.''

Take a drive into South Holland, in the rural areas outside Rotterdam and The Hague, and the fertility and sheer power of the Dutch delta becomes apparent. Thousands upon thousands of greenhouses stretch to the horizon, many surrounded by canals and sand dunes, the sea or myriad streams literally lapping at their doors.

Nearly 65 per cent of the country's gross national product - or $640 billion - is generated in the lowlands, from cut flowers, where Holland dominates the world market, and in other agricultural produce. Airports, roads - Rotterdam, the biggest port in Europe - are at the mercy of ever-rising sea levels.

When floodwaters inundated the region in the '50s, the Dutch government set up a new statutory body with planning powers to ensure such a disaster was not repeated.

Known as the Delta Committee, its work spawned the massive engineering program - from dykes to the closure of key sea inlets - that would transform the look of the entire south-west region.

By 2006, however, the infrastructure was dated and the devastation endured by New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the failure of levees sounded a wake-up call. An audit of Dutch dams and dykes in 2007 revealed that 30 per cent did not meet modern standards and another 30 per cent could not be properly assessed for safety. In the end, it meant that more than half the nation's sea defences did not meet even the '60s standards to which they were built.

The Dutch Government did not waste time: the Delta Committee was returned to life with the energetic, former agriculture minister, Cees Veerman, at the helm. The committee was told to create a blueprint for climate-proofing the Netherlands.

Armed with scientific data that showed sea levels along the 350 kilometres of Dutch coast had risen by about 20 centimetres over the past century, the committee - which included climate science leaders like Kabat - incorporated projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to create new scenarios.

The Dutch were told that by 2100, sea level rises of 65 to 130 centimetres could be expected and, by 2200, high-end estimates suggested rises of between two and four metres.

The report, delivered last year, resolved that flood protection levels in all dyke areas had to be raised tenfold. Previous standards were based on coastal protection from floods with a probability of one in 10,000 years. River areas were given a one in 1250 standard. The report then set out a 12-point plan to achieve this on both the North Sea coast and the Rhine-Meuse delta.

Rather than building dams higher, stronger and bigger, however, the report recommended the unthinkable: demolishing some dykes and raising water levels in other areas to mitigate salinity. Dubbed ''building with nature'' and described as ''giving room for the river'', the coastline is already constantly re-graded to combat erosion.

Millions of tonnes of sand will be added annually, natural dunes and tidal regimes will be restored and estuaries recreated. On the north coast, land will expand seaward by nearly a kilometre. Along the two mighty rivers, swathes of land will be set aside and protected from development to give breathing room to waters. At Lake Ijsselmeer, water levels will by raised by 1.5 metres by 2100 to create new freshwater reservoirs for Holland - and sources for water sales to drought-prone Spain and other Mediterranean nations.

In places where traditional solutions no longer work, new and innovative projects are being tested: in Rotterdam, incentives for ''green'' roofs, underground storage tanks to catch stormwater, the trial and design of dual-use structures that capture water from big storms but serve as playgrounds, even car parking, in the dry . Canals are being incorporated into development designs; parks can be built on dam walls.

A Delta Fund, seeded by a share of the nation's natural gas revenues, has been approved.

Veerman hands over in February to a new Delta Committee chairman charged with implementation. He is still surprised how quickly the committee's reforms have been accepted - by voters, by business and by politicians. Veerman and Kabat cheerfully concede that when it comes to the relationship of science and policy, he and his colleagues do not fully understand how it happened so quickly and smoothly. "It is rather remarkable that within a year after presentation, that we have come so far," Veerman told the Herald.

"Of course a lot of work has to be done, with a lot more precise filling in of the many different recommendations we made. But we have a span of 100 years in which we can work through this … now, other deltas are coming to us and we are advising them. Indonesia, Vietnam, the US … 60 per cent of the world's food comes from deltas, the Mekong, Nile, the Amazon, the Yangtse.''

The costs appear astronomical but Kabat says the alternative - the cost of doing nothing - is unthinkable.

''Until now, we have always looked at the negative side. The main basis of our report is working with water, looking at it as a possibility, not a threat. Protection is just one part of the reality … that is why people accepted our recommendations - because we have shown them that water has long been in our interest and we can manage the problem in a positive way."

Paola Totaro is the Herald's Europe corresponden

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