Netherlands to upgrade flood defenses to cope with climate change

Sophie Yeo in Responding to Climate Change: A national effort is underway in the Netherlands to upgrade the thousands of miles of dykes and dams responsible for keeping the country dry.  As the planet warms, experts say the Netherlands’ network of flood defences will no longer be able to hold up against rising sea levels, and this autumn, the government will explain how it plans to hold the sea back for another century.

In 2007, an investigation was launched into whether the the famously low-lying country could survive at all should projections of almost a metre of sea level rise by the end of the century come to pass. A committee concluded that life could go on in the Netherlands, but work must begin immediately to upgrade the country’s 3,700km of dykes, dunes and dams, which hold back the water in the country’s most vulnerable coastal areas.

On the committee’s advice, a Delta Programme was set up, which began work on a new policy framework for the country that will be put before Parliament this September, including five “Delta Decisions” that will form the basis of the country’s new water strategy.

These five decisions lay out concrete ideas on how the Netherlands can deal with some of the biggest challenges posed by their troublesome geography. The proposals will renew the government’s strategy on water safety and flood risk management, the future scarcity of freshwater supplies, and spatial planning of new buildings and infrastructure.

They also propose specific plans for the most vulnerable regions of the Netherlands, the IJsselmeer region and the Rhine-Meuse Delta....

The Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta, shot by NLR and ESA, Wikimedia Commons. The copyright holder of this work allows anyone to use it for any purpose including unrestricted redistribution, commercial use, and modification. 

Rotterdam: designing a flood-proof city to withstand climate change

Elizabeth Braw in Guardian Sustainable Business (UK): Water plazas, green walls, floating neighbourhoods. Rotterdam, the famous Dutch university city, is building a captivating new infrastructure, but not out of vanity. If it doesn't come up with innovative solutions, the city is set to lose its battle with climate change.

"We're really planning ahead", says Alexandra van Huffelen, Rotterdam's vice mayor in charge of sustainability. "The Dutch have lived below the sea level for centuries and are used to dykes and barriers. But today we're experiencing heavier and more unpredictable rainfalls, so behind the barriers we're turning the city into a sponge."

A crucial sponge. Surrounded by water on four sides, this delta city of some 600,000 people can't flush the sudden stormwater away. Instead, it has embarked on a climate change adaptation strategy that turns every conceivable area into water storage. "We have squares that are set lower than the surrounding streets and pavements that will function as water plazas and fill themselves up with water", explains van Huffelen.

"We've also built water storage facilities, for example an underground parking garage with a basin the size of four Olympic swimming pools. And we've introduced more green areas, including green roofs and green facades, that will be able to absorb water as well."

...The city is also in the process of building a floating neighbourhood, to be completed within the next three years, that will feature homes, offices, a school, a park and even a dairy factory. More are planned in future. A floating pavilion in the inner harbour is being used as a conference centre....

A street in Rotterdam, shot by Ralf Roletschek - Fahrradtechnik und Fotografie, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

The Dutch solution to floods: live with water, don't fight it

Tracy McVeigh in the Guardian (UK): Nol and Wil Hooijmaaijers have been watching the TV news from Britain with some horror. ...[T]he couple know what it is like to lose a home on a flood plain. .

Their old house and fields were sacrificed to a flood management scheme that forced them to sacrifice their farm for the sake of 150,000 strangers in the city of Den Bosch, some 30km upstream. Both in their sixties, they now live on a "mound dwelling", a man-made hillock with a flattened five-and-a-half acre top. There are eight dairy farms strung along the 6km dyke, like eight giant mud pies plunked down on the flat fields and linked by a raised road. All with the same large grey cattle sheds and newbuild houses in each plot.

All but one of the 17 farms that had been scattered across the land before the government's Room for the River agency arrived have been demolished. "That one goes in four weeks," said Nol, pointing to a tidy farm settlement behind mature trees.

The project on the Overdiepse Polder, eye-shaped farmland enclosed between the curves of two rivers, is one of 40 programmes due to be completed by next year by Room for the River. Set up in 2006, the agency was given a budget of €2.2bn (£1.8bn) to reduce the risk of Holland's four main rivers flooding. It has been busily lowering floodplains, widening rivers and side channels – basically giving the river space to cope with extra water – and moving 200 families, including the Hooijmaaijers, out of their homes. It's a project that the Irish government among others is interested in emulating and, after this winter, Britain may want to take note.

...The country's universities are producing some of the world's best water engineers and managers and it is exporting its expertise abroad; the Dutch government has advised on water governance projects in China, Africa and Australia.

The Netherlands has also learned from past mistakes – a 1977 report warning about the weakness of the river dykes was ignored because it involved demolishing houses. It took floods in 1993 and again in 1995, when more than 200,000 people had to be evacuated and hundreds of farm animals died, to put plans into action....

A polder in the Netherlands, shot by Gouwenaar, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication 

Storm kills three in UK and Netherlands, shuts down power, trains

Marie-Louise Gumuchian and Rhys Jones in Reuters: A strong storm battered Britain and the Netherlands on Monday, killing three people, cutting power and forcing hundreds of plane and train cancellations as it moved on across mainland Europe. Winds of up to 99 miles per hour (160 km per hour) lashed southern England and Wales, disrupting the travel plans of millions of commuters - the worst storm recorded in Britain in a decade.

A 17-year-old girl was killed when a tree fell onto her home while she slept in the county of Kent, southeast of London, while a man in his 50s was killed when a tree crushed his car in the town of Watford, just north of the capital.

 Thin volumes on London's financial markets suggested many traders had been stuck at home. A crane smashed into the Cabinet Office, a ministry in the heart of London, forcing Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to cancel a press conference.

Heavy winds also swept across the low-lying Netherlands, uprooting trees and shutting down all train traffic to Amsterdam. They were forecast to peak at more than 130 kph by early afternoon. A woman was killed and two people were seriously hurt by falling trees in the Dutch capital and a ferry carrying 1,000 people from the English city of Newcastle was unable to dock in the port of IJmuiden and returned to sea, RTL television said.

Fifty flights at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport were cancelled and Rotterdam Port, Europe's busiest, said incoming and outgoing vessels were delayed. In France, winds topping 100 kph struck the north and northwest, felling trees, whipping up seas and cutting power supplies to around 75,000 homes, according to the ERDF electricity distribution company....

Dutch government introduces nitrogen-reduction bill for nature areas

Seed Daily via UPI: The Dutch government this week is pushing Parliament to pass a law that would reduce nitrogen leaching from farms and industrial sites into dozens of designated nature zones.

Dutch Economic Affairs Secretary Sharon Dijksma announced Monday that after years of debate on the issue of reducing nitrogen from farm waste runoff into the European Union-designated "Natura 2000" network of nature protection areas, a bill to do so has been submitted to lawmakers.

In a statement, Dijksma touted the government's Programmatic Approach to Nitrogen bill, which was first proposed in 2009 and has gone through several failed attempts and a prolonged period of negotiations with stakeholders such as farmers' organizations, provincial governments, local water boards, and industrial and transportation groups.

"In the Netherlands, more than 130 Natura 2000 sites have high loads of nitrogen," she said. "This is due to economic activities such as agriculture, transport and industry. This bill, the Programmatic approach to Nitrogen, brings clarity in the rules so that nature and the economy can be balanced for their mutual benefit."...

Sunset in a Dutch field, shot by FotoDutch, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Dutch authorities to cull poultry after avian influenza outbreak

Reuters: Health authorities will cull 11,000 chickens at a farm in the Netherlands after an outbreak of a mild form of avian influenza, the Dutch Economic Affairs Ministry said on Saturday.

The chickens were believed to have the low pathogenic H7 strain, the ministry said in a statement. They would be culled as a precaution because the strain can mutate into a form that is fatal for poultry.

Authorities imposed a one-kilometer safety perimeter around the farm banning transports of poultry, eggs and other farm products. Testing would also be carried at 11 other farms in the area, it said.

In recent years several cases of the low pathogenic bird flu strain have been reported in the Netherlands....

To control floods, the Dutch turn to nature for inspiration

Cheryl Katz in Yale Environment 360: On a freezing winter day along the south-central coast of Holland, two beachcombers, hunched against the wind, stroll along a crescent of sand extending more than half a mile into the North Sea. Nearby, a snowkiter skims over the 28 million-cubic-yard heap of dredged sediment spreading along the shore. If all goes as planned, the mound will eventually disappear, rearranged by ocean currents into a 12-mile-long buffer protecting the coastline for the next two decades.

This is the Sand Engine, one of the latest innovations from Dutch masters of flood control technology and designed, as the national water board Rijkswaterstaat says, so that “nature will take the sand to the right place for us.” After having constructed the country’s vaunted system of sea gates and dikes, Dutch planners and engineers are now augmenting it with new technology enlisting nature to keep the water at bay.

“Normally, there is a lot of erosion here,” says hydraulic engineer Mathijs van Ledden, sweeping an arm toward the snow-covered spit snaking around an elongated lagoon. Van Ledden is a flood risk reduction specialist with Royal HaskoningDHV, a Dutch engineering consultancy involved in creating the Sand Engine, currently 2.2 miles wide. “This big reservoir of sand should re-nourish the rest of the coast in time,” he says, gesturing toward the skyline of The Hague, several miles away.

The Sand Engine will fortify eroding beaches as ocean currents slowly redistribute its dredged material. The Sand Engine is the signature project of Building with Nature, a consortium of Dutch industries, universities, research institutes, and public water agencies looking to harness natural systems for next-generation hydraulic engineering. Completed in late 2011 at a cost of 50 million euros ($67 million), the Sand Engine’s goal is to provide long-term fortification for eroding beaches as ocean currents gradually redistribute its dredged material. Until now, this coastline needed sand replenishment every five years, requiring expensive dredging that damaged marine ecosystems. The Sand Engine will feed beaches for about 20 years at half the price, said Marcel Stive, chair of coastal engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and principal creator of the technology....

A Dutch beach, shot by Albert Kok, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

The 1953 floods 60 years on: Have we learned lesson?

Cambridge Network: Sixty years after the devastating floods of 1953, the UK remains under threat of rising waters in the face of climate change and increased rainfall. Continued investment in infrastructure must be matched with increasing the flood resilience of communities, say experts.

Flooding experts from the UK and abroad gathered to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 1953 floods in a reception held by the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) and the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) this week.  His Royal Highness The Duke of Gloucester KG GCVO provided the opening address. 

On 31st January and 1st February 1953, England, Scotland, the Netherlands and Belgium were devastated by some of the worst flooding in recent memory. The North Sea Flood of 1953 was one of the most devastating natural disasters ever recorded in the United Kingdom. Over 1,600 kilometers of coastline was damaged, and sea walls were breached, inundating 1,000 square kilometers.  Flooding forced 30,000 people to be evacuated from their homes, and 24,000 properties were seriously damaged.

Six decades on, rising waters remain one of the UK’s greatest challenges. Rising sea levels due to climate change and increasingly severe and frequent rainfall has increased the risk of flooding throughout the UK.   Just this week, nearly 50 flood warnings and 200 alerts have been in place across the country, with south-west England and Wales expected to be worst hit.

Professor David Balmforth, CIWEM Fellow, ICE vice president and chair of the Inter-Institutional Flooding Group, said coastal regions are now better protected by sea defences, reliable flood forecasting, and well-established emergency response measures, but raised concerns that progress on making communities more “flood resilient” was less advanced.

...Frank Heemskerk of Royal HaskoningDHV said that the Dutch have changed their approach in recent years, “We now focus on working with water and nature instead of against it.  This means creating opportunities by combining multiple functions when designing flood defences.”...

1953 flood level at the Harbour Inn, near Southwold, shot by Nigel Chadwick, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

1953 North Sea Floods anniversary: More needs to be done on ‘flood resilience’, leading engineer claims

Skegness Standard: A leading figure from the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) has warned that more needs to be done to improve the ‘flood resilience’ of communities - including those hit by the devastating 1953 North Sea Floods which killed thousands. Sixty years after the devastating floods of 1953, the UK and Europe remains under threat of rising waters in the face of climate change and increased rainfall.

But continued investment in infrastructure must be matched with increasing the flood resilience of communities, experts have claimed. Professor David Balmforth, the vice president of the ICE and chair of the Inter-Institutional Flooding Group, said coastal regions are now better protected by sea defences, reliable flood forecasting, and well-established emergency response measures.

But he has raised concerns that progress on making communities more “flood resilient” was less advanced, arguing that work in this area might be the key to tackling flooding in the future. “It is important that we continue to invest in appropriate levels of flood defence works in the future,” he said.

“However, of equal importance is building the flood resilience of our communities. Flood forecasts are not universally embedded in the day to day life of all communities at risk of flooding, and in too many cases, communities do not even realise that they are at risk.

“Our buildings and infrastructure are also not always designed to resist flooding and more can be done to make them flood resistant – in much the same way that we have made buildings more energy efficient. We have yet to learn that building resilience against floods must be at the heart of any future flood risk management strategy,” he said....

Canvey, a city in Essex, UK, during the 1953 North Sea flood, from a US Army helicopter

Civil engineers destroy a test levee in the Netherlands

Rennselaer news release: Civil engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute were part of an international research team that collapsed a full-scale dike this week in The Netherlands. The test dike was embedded with advanced sensors and traditional measurement instruments, and results of the study are expected to help validate powerful new technologies for monitoring the health of aging flood-control infrastructure.

The dike was situated in a specially constructed basin, which the researchers filled with water. The slow addition of water into the basin increased the pressure on the dike. Water forced its way into the dike, and eventually softened the bottom of the dike and shifted the earth underneath, prompting the overall structure to collapse. The study was led by Dutch research institute Deltares, in partnership with Rensselaer and 14 other companies and universities from around the world. It was the research team’s third full-scale levee test collapse this summer. The full results of the tests will be presented at the Flood Risk Conference in November 2012 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

“The failure of flood-control infrastructure is very real, and can lead to catastrophic flooding as we unfortunately witnessed in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina,” said Tarek Abdoun, associate dean for research and graduate programs in the School of Engineering and the Judith and Thomas Iovino ’73 Career Development Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rensselaer. “A large-scale test like this can help supply us with invaluable data to inform and validate our efforts to create a long-term, real-time monitoring system that can assess the health of levees and help identify the vulnerability of levee or dam sections before they fail.”

...The collapsed dike was fit with a large number of different sensors, including SAPP (shape-acceleration-pore pressure) arrays that were developed through a partnership between Rensselaer and industrial collaborator Measurand. SAPP sensor arrays are designed to be installed into the ground, beneath and around levees and dams. The cost-effective arrays accurately measure soil deformation, vibration, and pore pressure at critical points of a flood-control system....

Photo from the Rennselaer web site

Introduction of Asian ladybugs into Europe was a serious mistake

Wageningen University: In retrospect, introducing the Asian ladybug into Europe was a serious mistake. The insect was introduced some twenty years ago in a conscious attempt to combat aphids. But research carried out at Wageningen UR (University & Research centre) into the invasion of this foreign insect has shown that the disadvantages far outweigh this single advantage. The Asian species is displacing the native European ladybug and has become a pest that can contaminate homes and spoil the taste of wine. The researchers concerned have reported their findings in the latest edition of the scientific journal Plos One.

The Asian ladybug, Harmonia axyridis, which originated in China and Japan, is larger than its European counterpart and has an almost invisible dent towards the rear of its wing cover; the colour and dots are much the same.

The foreign insect was introduced into France in the early 90s, and was first used in the Netherlands in around 1996. The Asian ladybug was a formidable weapon in the fight against aphids in greenhouses and on avenue trees, from which lice excrete sticky honeydew onto cars.

However, time has shown that these insects, which have very few natural enemies in Europe, are also devouring the native ladybugs. Furthermore, colonies of the Asian variety hibernate in houses and other buildings, where their excrement can cause contamination. Last but least, it has been discovered that when the supply of aphids runs out, this insect has an appetite for grapes and spoils the taste of the wine.

...On discovering that introducing Asian ladybugs had been a mistake, use of these insects in Europe was banned. Unfortunately, populations had already become well-established in many European countries. The best way to tackle the nuisance caused by non-native animals and plants is to introduce natural enemies. But this too can be a risky business, which is why the Netherlands has asked Wageningen University and the Plant Protection Service [Plantenziektekundige Dienst] to draw up an environmental risk analysis for the natural enemies of non-native species....

Asian ladybug, shot by John Alan Elson, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

How the Dutch make 'room for the river' by redesigning downtown

E&E Publishing via ClimateWire: For centuries, the Dutch have built higher and higher dikes to keep waters at bay in a country where 55 percent of housing is located in areas prone to flooding. But climate change has convinced them this approach will no longer work, so the country is embarking on a mammoth task of moving dozens of dikes back to make room for swelling rivers.

Now the oldest city in the Netherlands is being hailed for its plans to move the country's biggest river, building more efficient flood defenses and at the same time creating more sustainable urban living space. The city of Nijmegen's "Room for the River" plan has received the "Excellence on the Waterfront Honor Award 2011" from the Washington, D.C.-based Waterfront Center for combining flood safety with construction of a riverside park with the close involvement of the local community.

"We are proud that Nijmegen now features on this list of world cities," said Ingwer de Boer, "Room for the River" program director. "The award demonstrates that Dutch water management expertise remains a powerful factor at international level. We're improving flood safety and giving a new lease of life to these areas."

The €359 million ($460 million) project involves pushing a dike 350 meters inland, digging a new channel for the river Waal and thus creating a new island and an urban river park in the heart of Nijmegen. The river Waal bends sharply near Nijmegen and narrows to form a bottleneck prone to floods. A dike exists, but high water levels in 1993 and 1995 that prompted the evacuation of 250,000 people convinced authorities that climate change required additional measures.

"After 800 years of building dikes, we've been making them higher and higher," said Gert-Jan Meulepas, project manager at Royal Haskoning, an engineering and environmental consultancy that developed the project. "But if something goes wrong, the damage will be greater." After the floods in the 1990s, the government decided to no longer raise the dikes, but move them back. "We need to remain flexible in adapting to climate change, so now we try to remove the bottlenecks," Meulepas said....

A bridge over the River Waal in Nijmegen, shot by de:Benutzer:DoubleH, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Dutch evacuate 800 people at risk from leaking dyke

Reuters: Dutch soldiers and police started to evacuate 800 residents Friday from a northern area of the Netherlands where an inland dyke has started leaking and is at risk of breaking after heavy rains.

The emergency evacuation began in the early hours of Friday in four villages in the province of Groningen after days of rain, following calls Thursday for 100 residents to leave their homes and farms in the same northern province.

By midday the majority of the residents had been evacuated, a spokesman of Groningen Safety Region told Reuters. "We strongly advise them to evacuate, but we do not yet force them to do so. But this could change if the situation deteriorates," the spokesman said.

Local authorities said teams were also preparing to move thousands of cattle left on farms. Residents and the military packed sandbags along a 400 meter section of the dyke to help plug the leaks, and roads into the area were blocked.

The military also assigned an F16 jet to monitor the strength of the dyke with an infrared camera. The risk the dyke breaking is not very high, but the consequences would be enormous....

A view of the Eemskanaal in Groningen, shot by MigGroningen, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Dutch unveil latest plan in war against the sea: a sandbar

Terra Daily via AFP: In its age-old war to keep back the sea, low-lying Netherlands has dumped sand onto a surface larger than 200 football fields just off the coast -- and will wait for nature to do the rest.

The wind, waves and ocean currents are the next "engineers" in this innovative project that will see the transferred sand -- all 20 million cubic metres (700 million cubic feet) of it -- driven landward to form a natural barrier against the North Sea's relentless onslaught.

"It's already working!" said an excited project coordinator Nico Bootsma as he stood seven metres (22 feet) above sea level at the hook-shaped peninsula's highest point. It's here, at the sandbar's northern edge, where waves are at their highest.

The elements have started moving the tip of the bar, which already almost touches land at low tide. Over a period of 15 to 20 years, the sand will wash towards the coast, reinforcing beaches and existing sand dunes that help protect the Netherlands, more than a quarter of which lies below sea level...

A view at the Wadden Sea near Peasens-Moddergat, a village in the Frisian municipality of Dongeradeel. In the background the island of Schiermonnikoog can be seen. Shot by Wutsje, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Bangladesh and the Netherlands to share flood research

Syful Islam in SciDev.net: Flood-prone Bangladesh and the Netherlands are planning to exchange research findings and share experience on managing floods, which are projected to worsen because of climate change.

Floods wreak havoc in Bangladesh every year. Last week's floods killed at least four people and stranded an estimated 20,000, according to the Associated Press.

A five-year research programme worth €700,000 (US$1 million) will aim to strengthen the capacity of institutions and communities to deal with moderate and extreme floods. The programme was announced last month (27 June) and will be hosted by the Wageningen University and the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

It will allow the scientists to share experiences and come up with a framework that will link disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and flood management. Funds will go towards four PhD research projects that will analyse flood policies and strategies in the two countries, and one project aimed at putting research findings into practice though local workshops...

From a 2010 flood in Dhaka, shot by Rezowan, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version

Room for the river -- in the Netherlands, along the Mississippi

Renee Jones-Bos, the Dutch ambassador to the US, reflects on the recent Mississippi floods in the New Orleans Times Picayne: Nature can be ruthless. Whether you live along the Mississippi River or in the Dutch delta, water is at once your best friend and your worst enemy.

When snow falls in Montana, or rain in western New York, it cascades through America's heartland and along the Mississippi River system that drains two-fifths of the U.S. landmass. Similarly, a snowflake falling in Switzerland or a raindrop falling in northern France follows a familiar course to the Netherlands. The Mississippi River deltaic plain and the Rhine-Maas delta are the river systems' valves.

…For me, as ambassador of the Netherlands, this year's Mississippi flooding is a reminder of 1993 and 1995, when our rivers swelled to unprecedented levels. Large tracts of farmland were inundated; 250,000 people were evacuated. Direct flood damages exceeded $300 million, or 0.5 percent of Dutch GDP.

Our pat response to previous floods was much like those in the United States: Build the dikes higher, constrain the rivers more tightly, master the landscape. But something changed in the Netherlands in the late 1990s. More homes and businesses than ever had been built directly "behind the dikes," in subsiding land. Climate change began to produce wetter winters, leading to repeated, dangerous river crests.

Room for the River was born. This project, which started in 2006, restores the river's natural flood plain in places where it is least harmful in order to protect those areas that need to be defended. By 2015, through a series of 35 projects costing $3 billion, we will have lowered and broadened our flood plain and created river diversions and temporary water storage areas. We will restore marshy riverine landscapes to serve once again as natural "water storage" sponges and provide biodiversity and aesthetic and recreational values.

Complementing Room for the River are two corollary policies: "Retain, Store, Drain" and "Living With Water." They encourage neighborhoods to retain water where it falls, using cisterns, green roofs and floodable parks. Living With Water demands that urban planners and water managers create communities wherein water is a cherished asset and not something to fear and keep out of sight.

These efforts have not come without controversy. The Netherlands is the world's third-most-densely populated country. Intensive land use is common. Forgoing hard-won reclaimed land is politically difficult. But the disastrous floods of the '90s provided fertile political ground to start a process involving all stakeholders: citizens, businesses and local governments…

A scene from the 1993 flooding in the Netherlands, by Michiel1972, Wikimedia Commons

World learns from Dutch to keep head above water

The Independent via AFP: Dubai's Palm Island, New Orleans' upgraded dykes and Australia's water recycling plants all have one thing in common: they benefited from Dutch know-how gained in the country's age-old quest for dry feet. "The Netherlands has always battled against this natural enemy - water," said Hanneke Heeres of the Union of District Water Boards (UvW), which after 900 years existence is the Netherlands' oldest government body.

"And with global warming and rising sea levels the world is more and more interested in Dutch expertise," he told AFP. Currently, Dutch companies are focusing efforts on projects on delta areas in five countries: Mozambique, Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam.

An abiding image of the Netherlands is the boy from a famous children's tale who plugs a hole in a dyke with his finger to save his country from inundation - and with reason: the country's lowest point is 6.74 metres (22.2 feet) below sea level. In all, 26 percent of the country is below sea level. "

…Today, the country has a global reputation in "delta-technology" - claiming some 40 percent of the world's turnover in the open market. This excludes states who protect domestic makers of flood-barriers, dykes and bridges with anti-competition measures. Out of a population of 16.5 million, the Netherlands also boasts some 2,000 companies in the field of water, employing about 80,000 people.

…Dutch savvy in the field has gone well beyond Europe and already been put to use in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Its experts helped build storm surge barriers in St. Petersburg and Venice, helped make Jakarta flood resilient and advised on climate adaptation plans for the Maldives and southeast Asia's Mekong Delta….

Jan Asselijn (1615-1652), Bruch des Muiderdeiches bei Sturmflut

Experts urge Philippine officials to emulate Dutch flood control model

Joel Catencio in AllVoices: A Filipino environment expert proposed to the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) on Monday to emulate the flood control system of the Netherlands to avoid flash floods near watershed areas throughout the country. Dr. EstebanEsteban C. Godilano, director of the Climate Change Conference of the Philippines (CCCP) said this during the “Summit on Climate Change Readiness” at the DENR Central Office in suburban Quezon City.

Godilano said the flood control system in the Netherlands is an important development project as about two-thirds of the Europen nation it is vulnerable to flooding while at the same time the country is among the most densely populated on earth.

“The Netherlands is just like the Philippines surrounded by bodies of water. It is a geographically low-lying country, with about 25 percent of its area and 21 percent of its population located below sea level, with 50 percent of its land lying less than one meter above sea level,” Godilano said. He noted that the Netherlands, also just like the Philippines, has significant land areas which have gained through land reclamation and preserved through an elaborate system of polders and dikes.

…He said river dikes prevent flooding from water flowing into the Netherlands by the major rivers Rhine and Meuse, while a complicated system of drainage ditches, canals and pumping stations (historically: windmills) keep the low- lying parts dry for habitation and agriculture….

Dutch aid Mekong Delta climate battle

Viet Nam News: Viet Nam and the Netherlands yesterday agreed to jointly draft a master plan for developing the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta which faces the imminent threat of climate change. Government officials and experts from both sides wrapped up a two-day forum for the purpose in HCM City, held under the auspices of the Partnership Agreement for mitigating sea-level rise in Viet Nam signed by the two countries' prime ministers in Brussels last April.

To co-ordinate the Vietnamese – Netherlands Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) on Water, they agreed at the forum to set up a joint Vietnamese and Dutch governmental committee, chaired by their respective deputy prime ministers. The Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment will work under the committee to manage four different aspects – the plan to develop the delta region; co-operation between Rotterdam and HCM City; exchange of knowledge; and the Vietnamese – Netherlands water forum.

Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Nguyen Thai Lai, who chaired the two-day meeting, said until next March the SPA will focus on the development plan for Cuu Long Delta. It is the most threatened by climate change in Viet Nam, especially by rising sea levels.

Lai said the Vietnamese side will soon set up a permanent office and four consulting groups – for environment and infrastructure, sectors that use water and land resources, developing long-term scenarios for the delta's development, and developing governmental institutions for the purpose. He sought Dutch prompt assistance in drafting criteria for selecting members for the groups, defining what needs to be done, and budgeting….

Dutch review backs UN climate science report

Richard Black in the BBC (UK): A Dutch inquiry into the UN's climate science panel has found "no errors that would undermine the main conclusions" on probable impacts of climate change. However, it says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should be more transparent in its workings.

The Dutch parliament asked for the inquiry after two mistakes were identified in the IPCC's 2007 report. The inquiry is the latest in a series that have largely backed "mainstream" climate science against detractors.

The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) does not give the panel a completely clean bill of health, however. Whereas the IPCC's landmark Fourth Assessment (AR4) from 2007 "conclusively shows" that impacts of human-induced climate change are already tangible in many places around the world and will become more serious as temperatures increase, PBL also says the foundation for some of the specific projections "could have been made more transparent".

The Netherlands inquiry adds that the IPCC's summaries tended to emphasise "worst-case scenarios". However, this was disputed by scientists who had played a leading role in AR4. "The net impacts of climate change are not beneficial," said David Vaughan, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey, who co-ordinated the AR4 chapter on polar impacts.

Martin Parry, visiting professor at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change Research at Imperial College London who co-chaired the AR4 working group on climate impacts, welcomed the PBL report. "We welcome the conclusion of this report, which is esentially that our conclusions are safe, sound and reliable," he said….

Master of the St Elizabeth Panels (active late 15th century, Northern Netherlands), "The St. Elizabeth's Day Flood," 1490-1495