Almost a third of the Netherlands sits at or below sea level. Yet instead of losing land to the water, the Dutch have spent hundreds of years doing the opposite, turning water into land they can actually live on. They do this using dikes, windmills, pumps and specially built plots of land called polders. Over the centuries, this system has helped reclaim thousands of square kilometres from seas, lakes and marshes. None of this happened quickly or by accident. It came together slowly, often after floods forced people to rethink how they were living so close to water. Today, the Netherlands is one of the best examples anywhere of what good engineering can do to a country's landscape over time.
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