Word: flooding
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...greatest flood danger to the Netherlands comes from the North Sea, which is more powerful and unpredictable than the Dutch rivers. So, Dutch law has historically required North Sea defenses to deliver a 1-in-10,000-years level of protection. "And now the Parliament wants to raise the North Sea standard to a 1-in-100,000-years level of protection," says Pier Vellinga, a senior government adviser and professor at Wageningen University and Research Center. Vellinga calculates that to maintain this higher level of protection, the Netherlands would have to commit about 0.2% of its GDP annually--some...
...most visible example of British commitment to adaptation is the Thames Barrier, a set of hulking but beautiful silver floodgates that stretch across the namesake waterway about 11 miles downriver from central London. When the Barrier became operational in 1983, 30 years after the massive flood that motivated its construction, planners expected that it might have to close once or twice a year to keep ocean-storm surges from inundating London. In the past decade, however, the Barrier has been closing an average of 10 times a year. "The Barrier was initially designed to offer...
...urban village is being planned 120 miles north of London that will bring together mitigation and adaptation. "Bilston village will not only be a low-carbon-energy user, it will also try to make itself resilient to future climate changes," says West. For example, it will build flood protection into its design. "This could be a new model for how communities can walk on both legs into the climate future...
...Bangladeshis have lived with flooding forever. It's part of our culture and essential to our agricultural system," says Saleemul Huq, who directs the climate-change program for the International Institute for Environment and Development. "In the past, we experienced a very big flood about once every 20 years," Huq says. "But in the last 20 years, we've had four very big floods--in 1987, 1988, 1995 and 2005. So it appears that the new pattern is to get a 1-in-20-year flood every five or 10 years." That increase has gotten policymakers' attention. After years...
...suffering the brunt of climate change," he says, "but it is the rich countries' greenhouse-gas emissions that caused this problem in the first place." Britain is already subsidizing a substantial program in Bangladesh that will raise roads, wells and houses above the level of the last major flood. "Bangladesh is a showcase of what will happen under climate change," says Penny Davies, a diplomat at the British High Commission in Dhaka. "It amounts to a testing ground for what island states, including Britain, will need to do to protect ourselves in the years ahead...