Dutch defense against climate disaster: Adapt to the change

The Netherlands is among the leaders for the fight for Adaptation: how to live with global warming. As sea levels swell and storms intensify, the Dutch are spending billions of euros on building "floating communities".  They can rise with surging flood waters. The government is engaging in "selective relocation" of farmers from flood-prone areas. And is expanding rivers and canals to prevent for anticipated swells.

The measures are putting this water world of dikes, levies and pumps that have kept Dutch land dry for many decades ahead of the rest of the world in adapting to higher see level and stronger storms ahead.

Critics describe some of these efforts as alarmist. They would be too much and too soon. But other see the climate defense system being built in the Netherlands as a model for coastal areas of other nations -- including the United States.

There is a general agreement that setting lower emission targets is vital, being already be too late to prevent temperatures from rising for the next 50 to 100 years. So, finding ways to live with climate change is a pressing challenge.

In the Netherlands is expected the expenditure of $100 a person per year on climate-adapting over the next century. But as the developed countries move toward costly climate defense systems, is difficult to see as the poorer nations will be able to cover the price tag of shoring up sinking cities and irrigating drier farmlands.

Those nations are seeking billions in fresh aid from rich countries, arguing that the industrialized ones must compensate them for the warmer planet that they are at large responsible for creating. A recent study by the World Bank found that developing nations would need around $100 billion a year over the next four decades to adapt to climate change. The Project Catalyst, an offshoot of the nonprofit ClimateWorks, suggests $26 billion to $77 billion a year until the very close 2030.
Would these estimate of compensation cover the costs of migration from areas that will not be anymore able to support the present population? Would these estimate of compensation cover the costs of agriculture adaptation? Would these estimate of compensation cover the costs of providing potable water to substitute the present supplies that will dry? Adaptation is not only a question of vulnerabilities. Is a question of income. In the poor countries $100 a person is more than can be spent with such basic need as health.