How the Netherlands learned to live with the water

Posted: March 10, 2025

The Dutch spent a long time after the devastating coastal flood of 1953 fortifying their country against the sea. Over almost half a century, they raised dikes and dams, closed off entire estuaries, and built some of the most advanced and accomplished flood infrastructure in the world.

But even before that work was finished, another threat reared its head. In January 1995, meltwater from the Alps combined with heavy rainfall to swell the Meuse, Rhine and Waal rivers to alarming heights, culminating in the evacuation of more than 250,000 residents and a million animals—one of the largest mass mobilizations in the country’s history.

In the end, the dikes only just held firm. But now the Dutch had another source of water to worry about.

Making room for the rivers: How Dutch flood protection evolved 

Even though the country narrowly dodged disaster, the mass evacuation—together with a similar river flood just two years earlier—brought about another sea change in the Netherlands’ approach to flood defense. 

When the monumental Delta Works were finalized, “we thought we were more or less okay. We were ready, we were done,” says Ferdinand Diermanse, a flood risk expert at influential Dutch water institute Deltares. 

“But then we had two big flood events from the rivers. So that again opened our eyes: ‘Okay, there's still some additional issues.’ That resulted in a very big project, but also a little bit of a change of mind, you could say. We started to create more room for the rivers.” 

After the flood of 1953, the Dutch had not only shortened and barricaded their coastline, but also raised dikes along their rivers. Now the new program, literally called “Room for the River,” took the opposite approach: By moving levees further inland and widening the rivers’ floodplains, the waterways would gain more ground to spill over and relieve pressure on flood defenses. 

In dozens of places along the Rhine, the Meuse, the Waal and the IJssel, new flood channels were cut. Diermanse cites one example near the city of Nijmegen, where the Waal naturally narrows into a bottleneck; now a huge new bypass channel drains the river during high-water periods. 

“It gives the rivers more room to breathe,” Diermanse says of the countrywide effort.
In the meantime, the Netherlands has tried to keep learning from the water and adapting its response. After renewed flooding in 2021, attention once again expanded, this time to focus on smaller river systems that could struggle to cope with more extreme rainfall. Now individual regions are carrying out stress tests to see whether they could withstand a similar deluge. 

“Everyone is simulating what would happen in their area if they would get such an event, or maybe even a bigger event,” Diermanse explains. “What kinds of things would we come up against? Are all the roads flooded, and can hospitals not be reached? And do we see critical infrastructure that needs more protection? … We may need to up our game there as well.” 

The concept of letting the water in, rather than keeping it out at all costs, extended to urban planning, too. 

In the seaside city of Rotterdam, lakes, garages, parks and plazas now double as reservoirs for when the waters spill over. That is a constant risk: 90% of the city lies below sea level and it sits in the middle of a delta where most of the country’s main rivers meet the North Sea. That’s not to mention higher rainfall thanks to climate change. 

So while the hulking Maeslantkering barrier protects Rotterdam’s harbor from storm surges on one side, the Eendragtspolder, a 22-acre park and recreation area of reclaimed fields and canals, now acts like a giant sponge on another. 

The site, located near the lowest point in the Netherlands, is home to bike paths and water sports facilities but also serves as an emergency flood plain when the nearby Rhine overflows, capable of absorbing four million cubic meters of water in a lake and surrounding marshes. 

In the city proper, the concept is replicated on a smaller scale, with public infrastructure pulling double duty as retention ponds for rainwater. A sunken square in the dense city center functions as a basketball court and a mini auditorium for open-air theatre performances—or a deep bowl to collect floodwater. Elsewhere, a nine-meter-high dike has been topped by a rooftop park and landscape designers are studying which soils and plants can most effectively act as sponges to relieve flooding in paved-over areas. 

It’s all part of a more holistic strategy to contain the rivers and tides. 

“This starts with little things, like getting people to remove the concrete pavement from their gardens so the soil underneath absorbs rainwater,” Arnoud Molenaar, until last year Rotterdam’s chief resilience officer, told the New York Times in 2017. “It ends with the giant storm surge barrier at the North Sea.” 

Looking far ahead: the future of flood protection 

Make no mistake: Despite all efforts to make room for the water, those giant barriers are still sorely needed. In fact, the Netherlands is now looking hard at what resilience will look like in a future shaped by climate change. 

The monumental Delta Works, including the Maeslantkering outside Rotterdam, and the thousands of kilometers of smaller flood defenses, are slowly getting older and more vulnerable. At the same time, climate change is strengthening storm surges and raising sea levels—while parts of the Netherlands are actually subsiding.  

All the country’s storm surge barriers had to be closed simultaneously for the first time in 2018, then again just five years later. 

“In the future, as a result of continuing sea level rise, that's going to happen more and more often,” Diermanse says, pointing out that every closure of the Maeslantkering causes millions of euros in economic damage by cutting off Rotterdam harbor. “So, at some point, we need to do something about it.” 

That could mean replacing the barrier with one that can close more often and simply accepting that access to the harbor will be curtailed for the sake of safety. Or authorities could close it only at higher water levels, either allowing some built-up areas to flood more often or raising their local dikes to compensate. 

The current expectation, Diermanse says, is that the barrier probably needs to be replaced around 2070, but that would require major preparatory work to start as soon as 2040. To stay on top of the latest science and on-the-ground conditions, the government now updates its framework for flood risk management every six years under the Delta Programme. 

“One of the main challenges is that you need to look far ahead,” Diermanse says. “But the magnitude of future sea level rise is very uncertain. There's scenarios, let's say for 2100, where it could be 30 centimeters higher than now. But it could also be two meters higher.” 

Other countries may not even have the luxury of building up defenses anymore. Much of the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu is now forecast to sit below the level of the current high tide by 2050, which is why the country has started building a digital replica to preserve both a record of its physical form and its cultural heritage. 

Elsewhere, countries are reckoning with the fact that settlements will have to cede some areas to the sea and rivers as flood risks intensify, from villages in Wales to megacities like Manila. 

At some point, this could be the case in the Netherlands, too—although for now, Riijkswaterstaat, the national agency tasked with flood protection, likes to say that its forward-looking planning makes it the safest delta in the world. 

In the meantime, Dutch experts carry the lessons learned from centuries of flood management out into the world. Foreign delegations frequently visit the country to learn from its experience, and Deltares is active on nearly every continent. 

The government even employs a special ambassador tasked with spreading the water gospel; the current envoy’s predecessor was drafted by the Obama administration to help lead resilience and rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Sandy. 

Only time will tell whether the Dutch need to keep reinventing their own relationship with the water. But their centuries-long struggle is sure to continue. 

To Lotte Jensen, a professor at Radboud University researching the impact of natural disasters on Dutch identity, it’s a deeply paradoxical relationship—caught between a hard-earned sense of security and the constant threat of nature. 

"I think we like to think we’re very safe, precisely because we have so much experience and expertise,” she says. At the same time, “Some people say we need these kinds of disasters to realize how vulnerable we are.”