Floods in Central Europe – Caused by Human Activities?

5 thoughts on “Floods in Central Europe – Caused by Human Activities?”

  1. It’s an interesting subject and one I think about a lot, not only because I’m interested in water and its natural properties and characteristics, but also because I live in the Dutch province of Zeeland which is essentially a cluster of islands in a huge river delta. Water management is a big issue here, as you can imagine. Recent proposals to flood areas of polder in order to allow more space for the expanding Scheldt met such stiff resistance that the plans were abandoned. I expect it’s a common story all up and down the major European rivers, but certainly the option to just keep on building higher dikes isn’t going to be enough in the future.

    1. Yeah, it’s interesting to see how little people are interested in preventive action even once it is pretty certain that disasters could occur – I guess everybody just has the mindset of “it won’t happen to me”..? There were stories of this one German town where people opposed building a safety wall because it would have been an eyesore for the residents – and now their houses are flooded again 🙁 On the other hand, you can also understand that people don’t want to give up their livelihoods and move someplace safer – it’s a difficult issue!

      1. Yes, I know that here in Zeeland it became a very emotive issue. People have been pushing back the water here for many generations and then along comes the Green Party and wants to undo all that good work – at least that was how it was represented in a lot of the local media. I think that the idea of allowing nature to have its way for a change was also abhorrent to a lot of people, who tend automatically to look for technological solutions to every potential problem.

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