Go with the flow: Using nature to help fight climate change

Our climate is changing and because of it, our oceans and rivers are rising. In the past, we used large, manmade infrastructure to keep the water at bay. But maybe instead of trying to fight off nature, we should start working with it. Arecent movement among philosophers and landscape architects thinks that the time of large, expensive infrastructure is over. Ecology is the new engineering, and this new approach of "building with nature" is being embraced around the world. Contributor Anik See explores projects across The Netherlands, in northern Spain, and in New Orleans. **This episode originally aired June 20, 2017.

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The Netherlands have to think ahead. If they don't, this country will simply disappear under the waves. And that makes prevention really part of the DNA ofthis country.- TracyMetz

Since the 1990s, the Netherlands has been looking at softer approaches to help fight climate change, mainly by using the forces of nature.

"We are seeing that the consequences of those interventions are now coming back to bite us in the heels," says Tracy Metz, a Dutch-American journalist. "And as the climate becomes more irregular, there are more extreme events, it rains harder... more glacial water melts and comes roaring down the rivers and there's no place for it to go. We've tightened the rivers into very efficient navigation channels, which means that there's really nowhere for the water to go. Those are the two most important reasons for the Dutch to start figuring out a softer, more natural, more accommodating approach to water."

The new approach is called Building with Nature. That means cutting dikes instead of making them higher, and letting nature do some of the heavy lifting instead of building a wall to keep the water out. The Room for the River project involves 30 different interventions along the major rivers flowing through the Netherlands, and is essentially a flood control project that allows rivers to flood, instead of forcing the water to go where it wouldn't naturally go. The project, which cost 2 billion euros, involved buying out farmers and homeowners along those rivers to give more space to the water, but also involves improving urban design along the water.

Another large-scale project in the Netherlands is the Sand Engine, a massive pile of sand along the coast near The Hague. The sand was placed there in the shape of a teardrop, and over a period of about 20 years, the waves, wind and currents will gradually spread the sand along the coast to help prevent erosion.

The Dutch approach isn't just confined to the Netherlands, though. In Pamplona, which has seen flooding increase over the years, Park Aranzadi was redesigned to accommodate the flooding, and has changed the public's perception of flooding from a threat, to a natural part of the life of a river.

Guests in this episode:

• Tracy Metz is a Dutch-American journalist and is the author of Sweet and Salt: Water and the Dutch.

• Willem van Toorn is a Dutch writer whose work often deals with the effect of humans on landscape. In the 1990s he was part of a group of writers and artists who protested a massive infrastructure project involving dikes in the Netherlands.

• Marcel Stive is Professor Emeritus of Coastal Engineering at Delft University of Technology, and one of the designers of the Sand Engine.

• Iaki Alday is a landscape architect based in Barcelona who has worked with creating floodable public landscapes such as Park Aranzadi in Pamplona, Spain

• David Waggonner is the president of Waggonner and Ball, an architecture and planning firm in New Orleans, and developed the city'sLiving with Water plan.

Related websites:

• The Sand Engine is a large-scale experiment in coastal management near The Hague in the Netherlands.
• The Room for the River project is a flood prevention project with 30 different interventions along rivers in the Netherlands. See a picture of the map here.
• Park Arzandiproject in Pamplona, Spain.

• Living With Water project in New Orleans.

Further reading:

• The Dutch Have Solutions to Rising Seas. The World Is WatchingbyMichael Kimmelman, The New York Times, June 15, 2017

• Why Doesn't New Orleans Look More Like Amsterdam?byLorena O'Neil, The Atlantic, Sep 2, 2015.
  
• How to Think Like the Dutch in a Post-Sandy WorldbyRussel Shorto, The New York Times Magazine, April 9, 2014.
  
  

***This episode was produced by Anik See, Greg Kelly and Dave Redel.