The Zeeland Experience III

We spent a couple of hours at the Delta Works, an outstanding example of how the Dutch have sought to cope with the hand that history and nature have dealt them.



As the name of their country (The Netherlands, and its French equivalent, Pays-Bas) suggests, much of their territory lies at or below sea-level. The ubiquitous network of rivers (the Rhine/Rijn, Maas, Drecht, Waal, among others) and the long coastline have presented an opportunity (taken to the hilt by sea-faring traders) and a challenge (met by the network of dykes/dijks, polders and canals). In Zeeland, the devastating floods of 1953 set in motion a dialogic process of planning, debating and building that has sought to reduce the probability of disaster to one in four thousand years.
We visited the Oosterscheldekering storm surge barrier. My photographs are of the surrounding area but you can visit their site to learn more about how the barrier works and the larger network of dams that make up the Delta Works.

Coming from a region that has seen the Gujarat and Kashmir earthquakes, floods, super-cyclones and the 2004 tsunami, where we still discuss what these disasters offer an opportunity for us to do, we were so impressed by the fact that a problem had been faced squarely and solutions sought. No solution is perfect and not all problems can be foreseen, but still the effort must be made. The Dutch offer an example of public-private, state-society cooperation towards this end. It is not as if the government proposed and their plans were accepted without challenge, but the questions raised and challenges posed were taken into consideration to revise plans for the better.