Let the Levee Break New Dutch Water Management and Development strategies

in the Era of Climate Change. Jack McCarthy Spring 2015 ENVI 150 - Climate & Society Professor Bradtmiller

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Jack McCarthy Spring 2015

ENVI 150 - Climate & Society Professor Bradtmiller

Let the Levee Break: New Dutch Water Management and Development strategies in the Era of Climate Change.

“God made the world, but the Dutch made the Netherlands”, so goes the old

Dutch saying. Indeed the Dutch have been fighting a thousand year war against seem-

ingly impossible odds, the tides and the sea, but in many respects the Dutch appear to

have won. But is this war over? As seas rise, storms become more frequent, rivers flood,

and salt water creeps inland as a result of to climate change, will the churning waters of

the North Sea reclaim what was taken from it or will a salty truce be bargained?

The Netherlands is in many ways an ideal living-laboratory for water management and

development practices that address climate change. Billions of humans live near oceans

and are increasingly at risk of floods and sea level rise due to anthropogenic climate

change. The Netherlands’ acute vulnerability to climate change and long history of water

management will mean that new climate-proof water management and development

practices developed here will be applied world-wide, in some cases they already are.

As the world looks on, the Dutch are beginning to see water and the sea in a different

light. The Dutch government is enacting policies around a trinity of climate adaptation,

climate resilience, and climate mitigation that changes how the country manages water

and develops its economy. Institutions such as the Royal Netherlands Meteorological

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Institute are conducting inter-disciplinary policy, science, agricultural, economic and

engineering research. The Dutch mentality regarding water is changing, dikes are being

reopened and the oceans welcomed back, new towns and houses are being built for a

more watery world, the tide is shifting, literally. Due to rising sea levels, flooding rivers,

stronger storms and increasing soil salinity, the Netherlands is changing its historic wa-

ter management strategies to adapt to Earth’s changing climate.

History

In its present state the Netherlands appears incredibly vulnerable. It has indeed

earned its name — Dutch for “Low Lands” — as 50% of its land is below the elevation of

1 meter above sea level. Its lowest point is in Gouda at 7 meters (22 feet) below sea level

and falling due to land subsidence. All-in-all two thirds of its land is vulnerable to flood-

ing both from the sea and the Rhine river delta which runs through the country. It is one

of the most densely populated countries in the world, the urban corridor of Amsterdam,

the Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht called the Randstad runs along the coast mostly at or

below sea level. But how did it come to be that millions of people chose to live packed

together on what would normally be a muddy tidal plain? Simple, great dam engineer-

ing.

Like the soggy ground in Dutch peat bogs, the entire landscape of the Netherlands is

malleable. According to VanKonigsveld et. al. and corroborated by Wallinga et. al., the

Netherlands emerged from the sea in the last two ice ages as silt was deposited by alpine

rivers and sand dunes were piled up by advancing glaciers from the north. The glacial

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moraines are still visible in the north east of the country. The modern-day shape of

Netherland’s coast was formed by sand dunes, with lagoons and marshes building deep

layers of fertile peat on their inland side. These peat bogs served as perfect flood barriers

and batteries for river discharge, later they would be artificially drained and turned into

fertile cropland. In some periods the sand and landscape would be eroded away by the

tides, in others the sea currents and river deposited new sand and sediment to grow the

delta, the region is naturally dynamic and shifts with the tides.

Historical knowledge of the first settlements in the Netherlands begins with settlements

called Terps, artificial hills above the marshes and floodplains. After 1000 A.D. inhabi-

tants began to drain some of these peat bogs and turn them into fertile fields of crops

and burn the peat for fuel. Around the early middle ages the first Water Boards — ar-

guably the first democratic assemblies in Northern Europe — gathered to manage com-

munal water resources and flood defenses. Historical and cultural depictions of these

flood defenses are given by Tracy Metz and Maartje van den Heuvel in their book Sweet

& Salt about the past, present and future of water management in the Netherlands. Un-

der these Water Boards, the Dutch built a burgeoning system of dikes to prevent flood-

ing and enable tidal marshes to transform into farmland. These low-areas surrounded

by dikes are called Polders. Today Polders are a major fixture of the Dutch landscape,

with over 3,000 across the country. Often these Polders were below sea level, to keep it

from flooding, Water Boards devised ingenious systems of pumps to pump ground wa-

ter our of the fields. The source of energy for these pumps are the now ubiquitous

Windmills that cover the Dutch countryside. Often windmills would be placed on a gra-

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dient series of Polders, with each successive Polder being further below sea level. Over

time as the draining removed the excess water from the peat, the peat compressed and

the Polders sank further below sea level. This sinking would in turn require more pump-

ing and higher Dikes.

Between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Dutch nation took shape and in

turn continued to shape the landscape of the Netherlands. As the Royal Kingdom of the

Netherlands crossed oceans and built a trading empire, the Water Boards — now institu-

tionalized — were criss crossing the country with canals and docks and bigger dikes.

Subsequent technological innovations allowed dikes and drainage canals to get bigger,

pumping systems to be more powerful, and canals to be bigger. If there was a flood the

Dutch response was always to rebuild the dike even bigger, floods also spurred further

innovation and investment in water management. In the war between the Dutch and the

sea, the Dutch had now taken the offensive In the fifteenth century onwards there were

ever more ambitious land reclamation projects.

The Twentieth Century saw the culmination of the historical Dutch war against wa-

ter as articulated by three major projects, the Delta Works, the closing off of the

Zuiderzee, and the Maeslant Storm Surge Barrier. The booklet Holland rides the sea by

Klaas Graftdijk written in 1960 describes their scale as modern marvels of engineering.

Even in 1960 Graftdijk still writes of water management in the same way as the Dutch

did in the middle ages, as a problem that can be solved with feats of engineering to hold

back the sea.

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The Delta Works project was a reaction to the flood of the century in 1953 which killed

2,000 people and flooded much of the country far inland. In what was to be the epitome

of 500 years of the Dutch war with the sea, all the estuaries of the Rhine delta were shut

off from the sea with a series of dams and locks. Adding to the symbolism, the Dutch

Water Engineers were funded more heavily than the Dutch military at this time. The

only route for the ocean inland was through the Oosterscheldekering, a sea wall and

storm surge barrier with allows the tides to flow in and out, but has a moveable barrier

that can slam shut in the event of a large storm. The Oosterscheldekering is designed to

resist a one in one thousand year storm and last for several centuries.

The Dutch have completely changed the face of the Netherlands in the past millennium,

using essentially the same strategy this entire time. Historically the Dutch were very

aware that their lives depended on the dikes to prevent disastrous floods. Now Dutch

citizens feel a false sense of security and confidence in their ingenuity to prevent and

control flooding, this is because the massive water management projects of the 20th

century have done their job so well that they have lost their immediate significance for

many Dutch people. However, new challenges to the Dutch water management system

are mounting that cannot be kept out simply with bigger and stronger dikes.

The Effects of Climate Change

The UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has proved, and the Royal

Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) verifies, among countless international

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institutions, that global average temperatures are increasing at an alarming rate due to

anthropogenic emissions of Carbon Dioxide. As global temperatures increase, the impli-

cations for the Netherland’s climate are complex and severe.

The most acute threat of climate change for the Netherlands is sea level rise. In his book

The Long Thaw, Climatologist David Archer explains the mechanisms behind sea level

rise. Because oceans cover 70% of the Earth’s surface, it is the oceans that absorb most

of the warming associated with climate change. Warmer oceans experience thermal ex-

pansion and thus increase sea levels, already in the past century the IPCC estimates that

there has been 19cm of sea level rise. The other mechanism for sea level rise is melting

polar ice sheets, specifically the Greenland Ice-sheet. The IPCC’s predicted sea level rise

over the next century is 26-86cm, the best case scenario predicts that oceans will rise an

additional 26cm by 2100, that much is already locked-in based on what humanity has

already emitted. In the IPCC’s business as usual scenario, sea levels may rise by up to 86

cm by 2100, a supposed death sentence for much of the Netherlands. And sea levels will

continue to rise long after 2100. Even if all emissions were to stop tomorrow, Archer

demonstrates how feedback loops have been set in motion that will play out on a geolog-

ic time scale of thousands of years that may continue to melt the ice sheets and increase

sea levels. The problem is compounded upon the realization that many polders in the

Netherlands are actually sinking, at 0.2cm/year in some places, due to excess water

drainage from the soil.

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Warmer oceans don’t just raise sea levels, they also increase the frequency of storms.

Warmer sea surface temperatures increase air’s ability to hold moisture, this makes for

more powerful ocean storms and hurricanes. However, the KNMI reports that there is

not likely to be a higher occurrence of sea storms in the North Sea due to the paths of

large storms through the Atlantic. In summary, the KNMI states that the coastal impacts

of climate change as predicted by the IPCC and applied to the Netherlands: “Storm

surges will show little change, but sea level rise will continue; the process of sea level

rise is relatively slow but requires continued monitoring and coastal protection mea-

sures”.

Winter is the wettest season for the Netherlands. Before climate change, large

amounts of snowfall in Europe, specifically in the Alps, would provide ample snowmelt

to recharge Dutch rivers in the summer. But as average temperatures continue to climb,

the precipitation that would normally fall as snow in the winter will increasingly come

down as rain. As a result Dutch water-ways will receive much more water in the winter,

and much less in the summer due to a lack of snow-melt. This will increase the risk of

rivers flooding in winter, and increase the risk of drought in summer.

Flooding aside, the encroaching sea can create other problems as well. As sea levels rise

and river flow decreases in the summer months, ocean salt water is making its way fur-

ther and further inland and seeping up into the ground water and the soil. This saliniza-

tion makes agriculture much more difficult. One fourth of all farmland in the Nether-

lands is already affected by salinization to some degree. Dutch farmers are currently ad-

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dressing this by using large reserves of freshwater to flush salt water out of their fields

and irrigation canals, this further stresses water resources in the summer. This use for

freshwater to combat salinization is currently the largest consumer of freshwater in the

Netherlands, sometimes enough to dry up rivers during especially dry years in the

summer.

Current methods of combating salinization create additional problems. In the Rhine

Delta region where the Delta Works famously shut the estuaries and locked out the sea,

the locks are being shut more often to prevent salt water encroachment in the summer,

this is slowly degrading the salt marshes and sand barriers on their seaward side. This is

because not enough river silt and sand is getting past the locks to the marshes. Addi-

tionally, more locks make it harder for migratory salmon and sea trout to access their

spawning grounds upstream. All this shows that further compartmentalizing what was

once a cohesive delta into a mosaic water basins with differing salinities can create more

problems than it solves.

Looking at all the effects climate change, adapting effectively to all of them may seem

like an impossible task, but there are already many projects to be hopeful about. If the

Netherlands can adapt to living below sea level, they can also find a way to adapt to the

effects of climate change, although it might require a shift in the fundamental Dutch no-

tions about water management.

Dutch adaptation: Policy & Planning

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Policy, research, and planning are all important prerequisites for a concerted na-

tional response to climate change. Veraart et. al. explain in their report “From climate

research to climate compatible development: experiences and progress in the Nether-

lands” how Dutch political motivation to address and adapt to climate change arose.

Throughout the 1990s public awareness about climate change rose. In 2001, the Dutch

government, Dutch corporations and prominent research institutes funded a series of 37

studies over 10 years with revenues from gas taxes, many fell under the acronyms CcSP

and KfC. The studies were broad ranging and looked at things such as modeling flooding

scenarios in the context of climate change, plans for how to reduce greenhouse gas

emissions, how to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change, and climate com-

patible development. For any sustained top-down and bottom-up action on climate

change, these research and planning capacities are crucial for feed-back and monitoring

the effectiveness of climate adaptation and mitigation measures as they are being im-

plemented.

David Talbot’s report on “Saving Holland” points out that the flooding of New Orleans

due to Hurricane Katrina was also a wake-up call for the Dutch and the Dutch govern-

ment. It served to wake the Dutch up to the real and growing risks of floods in the

Netherlands.

Once public support and governmental had been aligned to address issues of climate

change, the question became: who is going to act? In their report entitled “Urban plan-

ning, water management and climate change strategies: adaptation, mitigation and

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resilience narratives in the Netherlands”, Stead et. al. strike a crucial balance between

adaptation and mitigation. Stead et. al. come to the conclusion that National Govern-

ments should be responsible for climate mitigation — international emissions reduction

goals and policies — while local municipalities should be responsible for climate adapta-

tion — regional Waterboards (which still exist largely unchanged) and towns undertak-

ing development projects and dike construction.

Dutch adaptation: Action

The wealth of research around making the Netherland climate proof is full of ideas on

how to do so. A major theme among many of them is to step back and making space for

the water to rise. Metz and van den Heuvel’s book “Sweet & Salt” is full of solutions

along this line. After all the water itself is not dangerous, it is when water floods in that

it can be destructive. So instead of trying to hold the sea back until the Levees burst, a

new development mentality has matured in which we should let the water in, break the

dikes, live with the water, and take steps to prevent storm surges and flash floods from

doing damage.

Along this line of thought, plans are being made by the city of Rotterdam to make more

of its dams more active like the Oosterscheldekering, with gates that only close during

floods or storms. There already exists a giant robotic storm surge barrier in the Rhine

Delta that swings its arms across the channel when its sensors detect turbulent water.

Other feats of engineering include inflatable dams that consist of a tube that fills up with

air and water to block off the mouth of a channel.

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Reopening once static dikes back up to the sea would let in more of that salt water that

conventional farmers worry about. The solution in this instance is to live with the salt

water, replace the wheat and cows with aquaculture and salt tolerant varieties of crops.

Among Dutch foodies and environmentalists, there is an increased interest in ‘saline

crops’, these include potatoes, juniper, sea kale, samphire, and buckthorn. Even the fa-

mous Dutch Tulips have salt tolerant varieties.

Flooding coastal farmland to switch it to aquaculture is also gaining traction, growing

fish, eels or shellfish. The interest in aquaculture has opened up large avenues of infor-

mation cross pollination between Rotterdam and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. The

Mekong river delta is facing many of the same salinization challenges as the Rhine

Delta, but as the Mekong become more saline many farmers diversified by farming

shrimp as well as rice, which resulted in a net increase in the region’s total productivity.

The Vietnamese often worry about whether the floods come, while the Dutch try to pre-

vent flooding as much as possible. The Dutch want to learn to live with the water as in-

habitants of the Mekong delta already do, many of the houses along the Mekong are on

stilts. Now the former Dutch minister of agriculture is an advisor to the Vietnamese

prime minister, this is an early example of the global exchange of climate solutions.

The Dutch want to learn to live with the water, what better way to do that than in

a floating house? A few development firms are pilot testing ‘amphibious’ houses, which

are essentially a normal house built on a buoyant foundation that can move up and

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down along an anchoring pillar. Such houses can tolerate a 4 meter rise in water level.

Some of the pilot project houses were built like this on dry land, anticipating the water’s

ascent. Many developers like the idea of flexible houses like this because it reduces the

risks of property damage.

To prevent flooding rivers, many planners suggest that more spaces be designated as

floodplains to take up excess river discharge without inflicting any property damage.

David Talbot’s paper outlines development plans to relocate farmers as a municipal Wa-

ter-board plans to flood the bank of the Maas river and make room for more water. An-

other planned development on the coast envisions a golf-course between the dike and

the sea which will double as a salt-marsh that serves to absorb large sea-swells before

they can crash against the dike.

For the Dutch, beginning the shift to adapt to climate change required them to drown

their entrenched mentality of water management and adopt a completely new one. This

holistic approach considers all parts of Dutch society and finds novel ways of making

solutions work for all stakeholders. There is no band-aid solution such as “more dikes,

bigger dikes!” as might have been uttered in the past. Initiating this process required

coordinated planning and research, but the new Dutch approach to climate adaptation

is flexible, this approach — once fully implemented — will prepare the Netherlands for

an uncertain future climate. Initial investment in modeling and monitoring may already

have paid off. Vietnam, New Orleans, San Francisco and Shanghai are all watching the

Netherlands very carefully as the Netherlands embraces its role as a research hub for

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water management. The Netherlands is in peace talks to end its thousand year war

against the ocean, and the results provide optimism for the ability of societies to adapt

to the effects of climate change.

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