Politico | When will the Netherlands disappear?
- The low-lying country has centuries of experience managing water. Now climate change is threatening to flood it completely
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Naomi O’Leary on politico.eu on December 17, 2019.
The local phone book in the Dutch area of Noordwaard is a record of a community that no longer exists: lists of numbers for homes that have been demolished, leaving just square patches in the grass where their foundations stood.
Once a thriving farming area, Noordwaard is now an expanse of reedy marshlands in the southwest Netherlands, deliberately designed to flood in order to keep nearby Dutch cities dry.
“Several years ago, when you came to that polder, big nice farms were there, acres with potatoes and onions,” said Stan Fleerakkers, a dairy farmer who lives nearby.
“Now when you drive there, there’s nothing left of it.”
The Noordwaard polder was one of 39 such areas selected for the Dutch government’s “Room for the River” programme, in which land was given back to the water. It’s a modern reversal of the centuries-old practice of land reclamation by the famously low-lying country.
It’s also a snapshot of the future the country faces: with unprecedented sea level rise forecast as a result of climate change, the Dutch government is racing against the clock to figure out how to keep one of the world’s richest countries from disappearing into the North Sea.