Nijmegen, Netherlands \u2013 On the banks of the Waal, the Dutch branch of the Rhine, swimmers are sunning themselves on a Nijmegen beach that didn\u2019t exist before the river level dropped a few months ago.<\/p>\n
Like many European countries, the Netherlands has been hit by a historic summer drought caused by a prolonged dry spell, exceptional heat and intense evaporation.<\/p>\n
The Dutch \u2014 with their dikes, dams and vast waterworks \u2014\u00a0have long been admired for their tenacity in the face of flood risks.<\/p>\n
Now their country, which is lower than sea level, finds itself, in an era of global warming, facing a dilemma: how to retain water while protecting themselves from it?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been coming to this river for, what … 25, 35 years?\u201d said entrepreneur Leon Berkers. \u201cAnd this is the lowest, the craziest level it\u2019s ever reached.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berkers is the captain of a restaurant boat that is now listing heavily after becoming stuck in the riverbank.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t even fill the coffee cups to the brim or they spill,\u201d his son Linus, 19, added with an air of amused exasperation.<\/p>\n
The drought is particularly visible in the southern and eastern provinces, where the grass has turned the color of straw and the Rhine this summer reached the lowest level ever recorded there.<\/p>\n
The shortage of fresh water and a process of salinization, as seawater pushes inland through the river network, have affected the entire country. And sometimes the effects are devastating.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like we\u2019re in the south of France,\u201d said Marthe Wens, a researcher specializing in water and climate risks at the Institute for Environmental Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst of all, there\u2019s nature, of course \u2014 there are the trees, the grass,\u201d she said, noting, \u201cthe trees already look like autumn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another crisis is unfolding underground, threatening the very foundations of buildings. \u201cFoundations are sometimes built on peat bogs: if these dry out, they shrink, and cracks can appear in buildings,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Since mid-July, Rijkswaterstaat, the national water management agency, has classified the situation as an \u201cactual water shortage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The agency has imposed restrictions on irrigation, while limiting how much certain locks can open to reduce the loss of fresh water and to prevent too much salt water from entering the network.<\/p>\n
Shipping, both the inland sector, and by extension maritime transport, has been heavily affected.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only are the carriers suffering, but also the industries that depend on the goods they transport,\u201d Wens said.<\/p>\n
With extreme weather events becoming increasingly frequent as a result of climate change, the Netherlands will have to rethink a strategy that has until now been \u201cwaterproof.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have always designed our systems to protect us from flooding and to drain excess water into the sea,\u201d said Micha Werner, a professor specializing in drought resilience at IHE Delft, the world\u2019s largest institute for water education.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut as we can see today with climate change, we are increasingly often faced with years of water shortage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe therefore truly have to change the way we manage water resources: instead of trying to get rid of water, we actually need to start trying to retain it within our hydraulic systems, and that really requires adaptation,\u201d Werner said.<\/p>\n
For Leon Berkers, whose restaurant boat has been stuck in the mud for more than a month, adaptation has so far meant improvising fixes to keep \u201cpots and pans from flying around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putting out his cigarette before starting the evening service, he sighed: \u201cI think we\u2019ll be without water for at least another two months.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nijmegen, Netherlands \u2013 On the banks of the Waal, the Dutch branch of the Rhine, swimmers are sunning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7020,16312,18,18063,6,593],"class_list":["post-38385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-netherlands","tag-climate-change","tag-drought","tag-europe","tag-heat-waves","tag-netherlands","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}