Netherlands has 200-year global warming plan

Amsterdam – With two-thirds of the Dutch population living below sea level, the country’s government sees the risk of rising seas caused by global warming as a matter of life and death. So it’s taking a long term view of the problem – a two hundred-year view, to be exact.

The Cabinet announced plans on Friday for a new commission to begin preparing water defences through the year 2200.


“We want to make sure that there’s still a Netherlands a century from now,” Tineke Huizinga, the country’s top water official, told state broadcaster NOS.

“We don’t want to just let the water flow and all have to move to Germany.”

The Union of Dutch Municipal Governments welcomed the news on Saturday, even though the plans will likely lead to new taxes, calling it a “necessity for the Netherlands to prepare for the consequences of possible climate change and to approach it, in the case of water, primarily from a safety standpoint.”

IOL