The Netherlands has spent much of its history trying to keep rivers under control with higher dikes and stronger flood barriers. But repeated flooding in the 1990s revealed that simply building bigger walls was no longer enough. Rising river levels, heavier rainfall and the growing impacts of climate change continued to threaten towns, farmland and millions of residents. Rather than forcing rivers into ever narrower channels, the Dutch took a different approach by giving the water more space to spread safely. The result was the €2.3 billion Room for the River programme, an ambitious engineering and environmental initiative that has transformed flood protection while restoring nature across the country.
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