News

This time it's going to take more than a finger in the dike to save the Netherlands.

Dutch officials say the low-lying country needs a massive new building program to strengthen its defences against rising seas as a result of global warming.

A plan put forward by country's Delta Commission includes thee equivalent of more than $153-billion in new spending over the next 190 years to broaden coastal dunes and strengthening sea and river dikes.

It is expected to be the central reference point for policy-makers for decades to come.

The commission recommended strengthening defences after revising earlier estimates of how high seas may rise and concluding that current safety norms are inadequate.

Two-thirds of the Netherlands' 16 million people live below sea level, mostly on land reclaimed from the sea over the centuries and protected by high banks of sand.

“We're not trying to scare people, because there's still time to act,” commission chairman Cees Veerman said in handing the report to Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende in a nationally televised news conference.

Mr. Balkenende promised to begin drafting its recommendations into law immediately.

Dutch policy-makers have, until now, prepared for a rise in sea level of around 80 centimetres by 2100. The commission said the country must plan for a rise in the North Sea by as much as 1.3 metres by 2100, and by up to four metres by 2200.

The commission was created in September, 2007, after the world witnessed the damage caused by hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Among other things, the Dutch began drawing up plans for worst-case scenarios that included evacuations – unthinkable politically just a few years ago.

Specific recommendations include improving dikes' strength “by a factor of 10,” using offshore sand supplementation to broaden dunes that guard much of the country's central coast and strengthening sea dikes.

The country's worst flood in living memory was a 1953 disaster in which a storm surge drove water along the Dutch coast more than four metres above normal levels, breaching defences and killing more than 1,800 people.

“Throughout history, we have made water plans after a disaster,” Sybe Schaap, the country's chief water official, told NOS news. “What is unique about this plan is that it has been drawn up before a disaster.”