Chris Bond in the Yorkshire Post (UK): …China, Kenya and even Australia have battled against droughts during the past 12 months. I say even Australia, because Queensland, in the north east, is in the grip of a flood crisis that has claimed 10 lives since tropical storms first battered the region at the end of November. Australian officials say the flooded area is the size of France and Germany combined and that more than 200,000 people have been affected.…Leeds University has some of the world's leading water management experts and a group of researchers recently published a paper looking at the risks facing UK water security both now and in the future. Joseph Holden, head of physical geography at Leeds University and director of water@leeds, the university's water research centre, says our climate is likely to become more volatile. "During the 80s and 90s we were fortunate to have a rather quiet period, but all the indications are that in terms of climate change we are going to experience extreme weather on a more regular basis."
This includes the risk of further major floods. "The question is do we build bigger and bigger flood defences, and who should pay for and manage them, should it be the government, or the private sector? Or do we take a different approach and learn to live with floods? We can't prevent them from happening so we need an infrastructure that is more resilient."
Prof Holden says urban planners are already adapting local environments. "By the River Aire in Leeds all the new flats built there in recent years have car parks on the ground floor so if there is any flooding it doesn't hit people's homes."…
The River Aire (at the point where it also the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the Aire and Calder Navigation). Old barges can be seen on the river against a backdrop of new and renovated buildings. Shot by Tim Green aka atouch, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
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