The conversation takes place via Teams. We are talking about the IPCC reports and the floods that ravaged Limburg in the summer of 2021. But the emphasis is on our climate. That is the expertise of Van den Hurk, who works as scientific director at Deltares in Delft.
He is busy. Since the publication of the IPCC report, he has given "at least twenty lectures and the necessary interviews". The latest report is a summary of the three separate volumes that have already been released.
Van den Hurk co-wrote part 1, which was published in August 2021. The main conclusions of 'his' working group were not soft, but actually already known: the climate is changing and humans are the cause. The report also made it poignantly clear that the change is being observed all over the world. And at an ever-increasing pace.
"Now that the climate is literally entering our back door, the social discussion is also getting stronger. I think that makes sense. It may, or rather must, be a little abrasive. So does the message."
"It will be - anyway - a bumpy road"
Bart van den Hurk works as scientific director at Deltares. He is also a professor at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Previously, he worked at the KNMI for more than 23 years. One of his additional positions is a board member of Climate Adaption Services, a foundation that works on a climate-proof world for everyone.
"I don't know if you should really call it scary, but the realisation that there is no escape now dawned on me. The climate is talking and although I am not a pessimist, it will be – anyway – a bumpy road. We will have to pull out all the stops to make that road a little less bumpy ."
"No, I don't find that difference in interpretations irritating. In fact, I think it makes sense. When media or politicians run off with factual material, I find that irritating. The climate is a fight and everyone can think what he or she wants, but we have to fight with the same weapons."
"Yes, and a very predictable fight. When I graduated in 1988, it was about acid rain. The climate was a niche topic and was long limited to science. It took until 2015 for the Paris Agreement to come into being and for it to become a topic for global politics. And then it takes years before it lands with the citizen. Only when the climate literally penetrates into our own backyard and policies are made that affect our personal lives, resistance will come. I saw that coming ten, fifteen years ago, but I do understand that we have to fight the fight now."
"Only when the climate literally penetrates into our own backyard will resistance come"
"Certainly. I almost feel like a prophet now. And I sometimes get tired of the fight itself, but it probably couldn't have been done earlier. The moment of truth is now."
"It is a fossil point of view to think that we can wait another twenty years. The conclusions are harsh. And clearly. Whether it's about biodiversity, water, social welfare or income distribution, all developments are moving in the same direction. The climate is just a thermometer with which we can gauge many other developments. Slowly but surely, the realisation dawns that all these developments are interrelated and I think that's a hard blow. That's why I don't always think that focus on CO2 is good. It is too limited. Take the electric car. An abomination for me. All cars have gained an average of 100 kilos in the past ten years and that's really not just in the battery. Under the guise of 'it's electric, so it's allowed', everyone suddenly drives an SUV. That's like saying you can fly to Thailand this summer because you haven't eaten meat for a few days. These are developments that irritate me. Not the government, but individuals are responsible for this."
"That anyway, but I think it's a shame that we never asked ourselves whether it could be a little less. Instead of travelling less, we use different energy. Why isn't the focus on less? Less travel, less raw materials, less land use and less CO2. Now we are only shifting the conflict and confrontation. Also take a look at water. That is scarce worldwide. If we want to survive, we have to make sure that we can do with less water. To me, that is more sustainable than all kinds of systems that are based on exploitation of old water resources, or ultimately need more water than will be available in the future. Climate change is leaving big scars there."
"Take the electric car, for example. For me, that's an abomination"
"The fact that that huge rain shower falls is meteorologically determined. It has been climatically proven that it will happen more often. The fact that it falls in Limburg has to do with a combination of circumstances."
"When such an extreme shower comes along, you have to learn lessons from it. There was immediately a lot of demand for research. Soon after the disaster, many parties wondered whether it could have happened to them too. Or, even more: what if it happens to us? Together with a number of water boards (including that of South Holland), a number of large municipalities and the security regions, we have carried out such a stress test. That's quite special, because I think it's the first time that such a supra-regional stress test has been done."
"Every year, our country runs the risk of a rain shower somewhere that only occurs locally once every thousand years. The fact that Limburg was hit in 2021 does not mean that we are safe for a thousand years now. Statistically that's crazy, but somewhere in our country it could happen again this summer."
"Let me start at the beginning. At the end of 2021, we carried out a three-day hackathon at Deltares. We looked at what happens when a polder in South Holland has to process 200 mm of rainwater in one day. A small polder has a pumping capacity of 20 mm per day. Then it takes ten days to pump that water out again. We also investigated what it does when 20 mm falls in Haarlemmermeer or Amsterdam for ten days. Ten days of water in your street does not immediately pose a safety risk, but in the vicinity of Kampen, coinciding discharge waves from the Vecht catchment area turned out to be able to lead to safety risks. The results of that hackathon were so appealing that we then conducted a case study together with the Province of South Holland, the water boards, Rijkswaterstaat and the municipalities of Dordrecht and Rotterdam. In it, we investigated what could happen if there were as much precipitation in South Holland as happened in Limburg."
"We cannot continue to protect indefinitely and will have to accept the consequences more often"
"Minimal, because then you are only talking about the calculated damage. We mainly included direct damage in our stress test. That does include uninsured things like public infrastructure. Think of networks, transport roads and public facilities. But the indirect (consequential) damage is not included, so the amount can be even higher."
"We didn't deal with that. As a researcher, I don't think much of that either, but as a citizen I do, of course. This whole issue has to do with solidarity. I also like that about our Delta and flood protection programme. We have to protect ourselves from high water. This is a matter of solidarity, because it provides enormous added value on a social level. Despite the fact that quite a few things have gone wrong, for me that is also one of the most important conclusions of Limburg. We have a well-thought-out water safety system. This system consists of three layers: prevention (dykes), limiting consequential damage (through spatial planning) and crisis management. A fourth layer is now being discussed at the policy tables: attention to recovery. A healthy development. We cannot continue to protect indefinitely and will have to accept the consequences more often. Repair of material damage is then important. And one of the most important aspects of this is trust. As a citizen, you must be able to rely on being helped if it happens to you. Our society is agile, but we need to arrange that recovery better."
"Certainly, but we can't put down six-metre-high quay walls at Valkenburg. Prevention is always limited. As far as I'm concerned, recovery is about arranging in advance. Insurance is part of that and I now know how complicated that issue is. I'm not going to burn my fingers on that, because that's not my expertise, but insurers can of course handle the damage very well."
"It's better to invest in company parties than in risk protocols"
"In any case, it is inevitable that many crisis services will have to take action at the same time. That is a difficult dilemma, because you don't want to close everything. There must be room for improvisation. It is important that people know how to find each other easily and quickly, but then they have to know each other. In the supra-regional stress test, several provinces, water boards, security regions and several larger municipalities were simultaneously managing a crisis. An eye-opener, especially in an administrative sense, because now they know each other. That helps if something happens. I sometimes jokingly say that it is better to invest in company parties where new encounters take place than in risk protocols."
"Thinking about protocols is not bad. They are there for a reason. If you deviate too much from it, you may be better off in the short term, but not in the long term. I am certainly not against protocols. On the contrary. I am only arguing that we should also think about that ability to improvise. There is always something of a surprise in every event. We have to learn from that."
"The preparation is mainly in the stress test itself. The surprise is now gone, because we assumed that there was so much precipitation, in that region, with that infrastructure, etc. And of course, the reality is always a little different, but even with those known factors, we can already draw surprising conclusions. That's why I'm such a strong supporter of stress testing. We can learn from what has already happened elsewhere."
"I wouldn't move immediately if I were you. But I would allow myself some mental stress tests. What would I do if it happened? And what can I do? Research shows that our flood risk management is very high. Our confidence in water management is also high. But strangely enough, our water awareness is very low. Apparently we need Limburg to think about it. So let's use Limburg to make it stick, so that we are more aware and can make preparations. It really gives peace of mind if you know what you could do yourself if the Limburg shower falls in your province. And it helps a lot if you know whether and how you are insured, who is liable and what you can count on."
"I'm a fan, because transparency about risks and damage is necessary. That is part of raising awareness, but on the other hand we also have to watch out for tendentious messages. Limburg is not suddenly the norm. Of course, you can't always foresee everything, but you can think about your own risk profile and make sure you are well informed about the options for hedging risks. I think Ahmed Aboutaleb is a very good example of someone who takes responsibility. He constantly emphasises everywhere that Rotterdam is a water city and therefore has to deal with climate risks. He is the personification of a mayor who is water-conscious."
"More than. The discussion about insurability is being conducted in public. The Association stimulates the social discussion, collaborates with all kinds of academic institutes and bundles knowledge. I think that's positive. Insurers know their stuff, for example about risk profiles and claims handling, but they must continue to guard against overly opportunistic tendencies. Transparency about the consequences must go hand in hand with transparency about the risk."
(Text: Miranda de Groene - photography: Ivar Pel)
"Insurers know their stuff, for example about risk profiles and claims handling, but they have to guard against too opportunistic tendencies"