Kingdom of the Netherlands: From Floods to Droughts
Prepared by Karianne de Bruin and Harm Duel, Deltares
For more than a millennium, the Netherlands has experienced regularly extreme inundation events, most often from storms from the North Sea and high river levels from inland, upstream precipitation. Much of the region accounted for this in its implicit development strategy to “reclaim” land from the sea for farms and cities, building dykes to secure land from high waters, and extensive, constant pumping to move water away from low elevations. The most recent large-scale reclamation project was the South Flevoland polder in 1968, which is now a densely populated region with very modern planning and land-use patterns. By about 1980, about half of the Netherlands was below sea level.
National economic planning was shaped by the need to secure property and life from the threat of flooding, which was a side effect of the strategy of economic growth through, in part, increasing the extent of the Netherlands through the conversion of near-shore areas into dry land. Governance, land use planning, and infrastructure operations and investment were tightly integrated to reduce flood risks, many of which became integrated into a national water (and flood) centric Delta Commission in 1953 after a catastrophic flood event. Much of the language around these issues described “fighting” water from rivers and the sea.
The 21st century has seen quite different drivers and trends emerge, with the threat of climate change taking a more dominant role. A second Delta Commission was convened in 2007, which initially focused on higher flood risks to ensure long-term flood resilience for the Netherlands. The second Commission targeted governance reform, more flexible approaches to planning to cope with uncertainties in the timing of growing flood risks, sea-level rise, and the use of nature-based solutions integrated within traditional gray infrastructure systems. Economic incentive systems promoted mechanisms to reduce flood risks even with more intense flood events, such as promoting floating domestic and commercial constructions. National finance institutions took a leading role, such as issuing the largest green bond in European history in 2019 for 5 billion euros, which funded an NbS flood risk reduction and climate adaptation project.
Beginning in 2003, western Europe began to experience a series of intense droughts that have continued into 2023. The Netherlands had little experience with long term or strong droughts, which provoked a national technical and policy discussion about how to prepare for increasing floods at the same time that droughts were also increasing in intensity and frequency. The need to revisit national economic development strategy has become critical. The Delta Programme and linked National Water and Climate Knowledge and Innovation Programme emphasize long-term collaboration between the government, science, and business to address this challenge (Netherlands Waters Partnership, 2020).
These documents mark a radical change in how the Netherlands views water—less as an adversary and more as a part of nature to accommodate, live with, and adjust to. Indeed, the country has even reduced its area by “returning” land back to the sea in areas that were economically unfeasible to defend against rising ocean levels, while many riparian zones are now “making room for the river” to allow floodwaters to expand, infiltrate, and slow down rather than be channelized downstream, making lower basin flood impacts worse. The national resilience strategy recognizes that working with water will be more important for this century and beyond.
Indeed, the Delta Programme is intended to render the Netherlands climate-proof and water-resilient by 2050, with the intent of building national economic resilience to ongoing climate impacts (National Delta Programme, 2022). The core of the Delta Programme is a national approach, with room for regional interpretation. The national government, provincial and municipal authorities and water authorities have shared responsibility and shared ownership. Traditional work around flood risk management, fresh water supply and sanitation management, and long-term land-use planning continue. A new component, however, is to ensure that the Netherlands will be resilient to water shortages by 2050. An agenda is set to actively manage surface and ground water as an integrated system, to maintain crucial user functions, and to resource freshwater effectively and economically.
For this decade, national targets focus on sequencing priorities for freshwater management from the National Water Programme and the National Environment Planning Vision. The priority sequence for water management is to safeguard the availability of water, to prevent flooding, and to serve as a basis for balancing interests in spatial planning. The underlying principle is to match freshwater demand with water availability. This is done by taking water availability into account when allocating functions that require water and by focusing on the economic use of water by those functions despite uncertainties in the water cycle. The priority sequence to prevent water shortages is set at: improved retention and storage; distributing water more intelligently; and preparing and accepting damage/residual damage because not all damage caused by natural phenomena can ever be prevented (National Delta Programme, 2022). Many of these priorities mark significant changes from past decades. The ambition set for the main water system is to be able to deal with a drought that occurs once every twenty years.
These issues are not limited to technical decision makers. Severe water scarcity and drought between 2018 and 2020 brought the challenge to much of the public. The impacts of the 2018 drought in the Netherlands have been assessed and quantified by Ecorys (2019) and Mens et al. (2022). Ecorys estimated the overall economic effect of the 2018 drought at 450–2080 million EUR (Ecorys, 2019). Mens et al (2022) estimates for future droughts follow a worst-case Delta Scenario 2050 (Stoom) for the economy, where economic growth, strong population growth, and strong and rapid climate change converge. The scenarios provide qualitative and quantitative data on the climate, water systems, water consumption, and the use of land. Based on the model simulations, the current drought risk in the Netherlands is estimated at 372 million EUR per year and may increase to 611 million EUR through 2050.
Although drought is a relatively new problem for the Netherlands, the potential for water scarcity issues are now being integrated into how the country approaches older concerns around flooding and inundation. Fundamental shifts are occurring in how the country views resilience as a strategy and then implements that strategy at more local levels. Challenges still remain, though, such as how to balance investment, governance, and tradeoffs between these risks. “Complete” protection from both threats is not possible, but new tools can ensure that the Netherlands retains a high standard of living, remains attractive to investment, and prospers even as an uncertain climate continues to evolve in unexpected ways.
References
Ecorys, 2019. Economische schade van droogte in 2018.
National Delta Programme, 2022. Speed up, connect and reconstruct. National Delta Programme 2023.