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.

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