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Damaged chairs outside O'Donovan's Restaurant on Main street in Midleton, Co Cork, damaged by flooding after Storm Babet, the second named storm of the season, swept in. Alamy Stock Photo

John Gibbons We must turn to nature if we're serious about tackling extreme flooding

The environmental journalist and commentator says multi-million flood barriers are not the answer – nature is.

NATURE, TO BE commanded, must first be obeyed. This is a lesson that the citizens of a once-notorious flooding blackspot in North Yorkshire took to heart, and it has paid off dramatic dividends.

Between 1999 and 2007, the town of Pickering was flooded four times, with the damage running in to many millions of pounds. The town was refused a £20 million flood defence scheme on the grounds of the cost being too high to protect a limited number of people.

In any event, the large concrete works being proposed would have been an eyesore in a town that depends on tourism income. Instead, they brought in academics and environmentalists as well as experts from the UK Environmental Agency and Forestry Commission to study the root cause of the repeated flooding – water rushing off the nearby hills and dales.

A series of nature-based solutions were developed, including hand-built leaky dams made of logs and branches, as well as planting woodlands and other measures, such as preventing uplands being burned, to slow down and trap rainfall.

residents-of-pickering-in-north-yorkshire-moved-living-room-furniture-into-the-river-which-runs-through-the-town-today-to-recreate-the-scenes-they-faced-in-the-devastating-floods-of-last-year-91-year Residents of Pickering in North Yorkshire moved living room furniture into the river which runs through the town in 2008 to recreate the scenes they faced in the devastating floods. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

The total cost was £2 million, or one tenth of the cost of the proposed concrete wall for the town centre and the project has been a roaring success. Pickering has remained dry as other towns in the region have been repeatedly inundated by increasingly severe rainfall, fuelled by climate change.

The success of this intervention has since been replicated in other communities in England and Scotland. A project to restore natural Culm grasslands in Devon has for instance seen the land’s ability to retain water increase five-fold.

‘If your town is flooding, it’s too late’

The initial reaction to the flooding disaster in country Cork in recent days has been to focus on ‘hard’ engineering solutions, including demands by some politicians to ‘reform’ the planning system, ostensibly to prevent objections to flood relief schemes.

It is noteworthy that many of the local politicians blaming the planning system for failing to deal with the kind of flooding that has devastated their local areas can often be found to ignore the advice of their own engineers and vote in favour of rezoning land in flood plains for housing.

the-clean-up-gets-underway-on-main-street-in-midleton-co-cork-after-extensive-damage-caused-by-flooding-following-storm-babet-the-second-named-storm-of-the-season-swept-in-picture-date-thursday The clean up in Midleton, Co Cork, after extensive damage caused by flooding following Storm Babet. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

While there is undoubtedly a role for flood relief schemes in specific areas where high value infrastructure needs to be protected, the political and media clamour to “do something” after the latest flooding disaster sees nature-based solutions being ignored or even blamed as mega-engineering projects are instead rushed through.

As the examples of Pickering and elsewhere have clearly shown, the only truly sustainable long term solution to flooding is to tackle it at source. By the time tens of millions of litres of flood waters are rushing into your town or village, it’s usually too late.

Nature provides the answer

Climate minister Eamon Ryan at the weekend stated that a critical part of how Ireland responds to the worsening threat of extreme rainfall and flooding is to change how we manage our land, including paying farmers to develop new practices that will reduce the amount of excess rainfall sweeping off farmlands and uplands and swamping local towns and communities.

Some of the methods he proposed included planting different species of grasses with deeper root systems that are better able to absorb flooding, as well as developing native forestry and allowing some rewilding.

“It is going to be a case of paying and making sure we have the right incentives so that in the upper catchments particularly you slow the water down, and in that way, reduce the problem in our towns and villages and cities”, Ryan told the Green Party conference at the weekend.

Ireland’s peatlands form excellent natural ‘sponges’ to absorb torrential downpours, especially in the flood-prone midlands. However, decades of industrial peat extraction have damaged and degraded much of this natural bulwark against flooding.

transport-minister-eamon-ryan-speaking-to-the-media-following-a-cabinet-meeting-at-avondale-house-co-wicklow-picture-date-wednesday-september-6-2023 Eamon Ryan proposed nature-based solutions to flooding. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

The government’s Climate Action Plan 2023 identifies peatland rehabilitation as offering “increased natural capital, enriched biodiversity and improved water quality and flood attenuation”.

The overall target is to rehabilitate 77,600 hectares of boglands by 2030. The absolute value of this work in terms of reducing the likelihood of devastating flooding events should become clearer over time.

For many decades, the Office of Public Works (OPW) has implemented arterial drainage schemes, which have included dredging and straightening rivers and tributaries and ‘protecting’ farmlands in flood plains from being routinely inundated.

While this may at one time have seemed like a good idea, the simple fact is that water has to go somewhere. If we prevent rivers from spreading into their natural floodplains during times of flooding, and if land management practices are degrading the ability of our uplands to retain rainfall, the water is instead being pushed downstream, with entirely predictable consequences.

The drainage of bogs and wetlands and the ‘improvement’ of lands, as well as allowing housing to be built on floodplains is picking a fight with nature, and it’s a fight that we will lose, every time.

Farmers whose lands are likely to be flooded as a result should of course be compensated via agri-environmental schemes, but it is infinitely cheaper to allow water to spread into its natural floodplains than have it canalised and then smash into our towns and cities, with devastating consequences.

This is not a drill

In 2023, the planet has warmed by around 1.5C versus pre-industrial. This temperature shift means the atmosphere is now capable of holding around 10% more water than a century ago. This is the largest shift in the global hydrological cycle since the end of the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago.

Warming oceans are providing the fuels for powerful storms and the warmer atmosphere is now delivering more intense deluges, both in Ireland and across Europe and much of the world, than have been witnessed in centuries.

According to climate scientists at the Irish Centre for High End Computing, more flooding is probably the “biggest change” Ireland will experience by the 2050s.

Basing your entire flood defence strategy around building concrete barriers assumes you know exactly how much flooding you are trying to defend against.

If for instance tens of millions of euros are invested in building, say a town’s defences to cope with 2-3 metres of peak flooding, the scope for a tragedy should this town be hit by a 4-metre event that breaches these defences and places the people behind them at real risk of drowning.

As global temperatures continue to rise, these scenarios are already playing out, in real time, right across the world. The smart move is to work with nature, not against it, but are our politicians and engineers open-minded enough to listen?

John Gibbons is an environmental journalist and commentator. 

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    Mute Ollie Fitzpatrick
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    Nov 12th 2023, 8:40 PM

    Contributors should remember that it is a money diary and not an actual minute by minute account of your day. For instance no need for things like I took the dog for a walk, I milked the cows, I went to the gym etc etc. They are long and boring enough with no need to pad it out.

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    Mute Emer Daly
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    Nov 12th 2023, 8:57 PM

    @Ollie Fitzpatrick: I like hearing about people’s day to day though aswell as what they spend on.

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    Mute Ollie Fitzpatrick
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    Nov 12th 2023, 9:23 PM

    @Emer Daly: but it’s a daily money diary , not a daily blog! We have enough to worry about or gloat over in our own daily lives. Also how many are actually factual?

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    Mute Jason Memail
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    Nov 12th 2023, 9:56 PM

    @Ollie Fitzpatrick: “everything I don’t like is fake”

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    Mute Emer Daly
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    Nov 12th 2023, 10:30 PM

    @Ollie Fitzpatrick: I know but it’d be very short if it was only about money spent. I dunno but I look forward to these diaries.

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    Mute Maniac 2000
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    Nov 12th 2023, 11:13 PM

    @Ollie Fitzpatrick: the journal want information on what you do during the day. Makes it interesting and relatable

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    Mute
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    Nov 13th 2023, 12:11 AM

    @Ollie Fitzpatrick: Boring!

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    Mute Ryan O'Rourke'Glynn
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    Nov 13th 2023, 12:54 AM

    @Ollie Fitzpatrick: don’t read them then?

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    Mute offside again
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    Nov 12th 2023, 8:28 PM

    I spend as little as possible. I’m not mean, it’s just the way it was back when I was young. So it wouldn’t be an interesting diary ..
    There wasn’t such a variety of stuff to spend money on either.

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    Mute Ron Burgundy
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    Nov 13th 2023, 12:45 AM

    @offside again: there’s a lad on boards.ie that was due a free bottle of honey, cheap sh.te less that €2 and he drove to six different Lidls until he found one that had it in stock. Guy is all over freebies on every bargain alert thread, like a cheap suit. He got laughed out of it over there but I’d love to see his money diary here for the cringe factor laugh.

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    Mute
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    Nov 13th 2023, 1:59 AM

    @Ron Burgundy: there’s a big overlap of the r@tards from boards and the mong0s on the journal

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    Mute Antóin Ó Cumamothóin
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    Nov 12th 2023, 9:43 PM

    I was hoping to save up a few grand by next spring, but it’s looking uncertain now that my usual clientele have outsourced most escorting jobs to the Ukrainians.

    37
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    Mute ubeenfamed
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    Nov 12th 2023, 8:22 PM

    Comment test . Comment test

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    Mute
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    Nov 12th 2023, 10:15 PM

    @ubeenfamed: One.. Two… One.. Two… I think we’re good Jim.

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    Mute Tommy Haze
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    Nov 12th 2023, 11:18 PM

    Make a budget at the start of the year then stick as close to it as you can.
    And remember..
    Every copper a prisoner.

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    Mute
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    Nov 13th 2023, 12:10 AM

    @Tommy Haze: Mind the pennies, and the pounds will take care of themselves, Tommy lad!

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    Mute S Badger
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    Nov 13th 2023, 8:04 AM

    I hope to go away this “spending season”. Don’t care where though, but wish to get away from this force fed spending atmosphere. I can barely keep the lights on, yet I work hard, full time. Call me a grinch, I can’t stand this time of year.

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    Mute
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    Nov 12th 2023, 10:27 PM

    There does be some right miserable feckers on this money diary thing wouldn’t spent a penny never see them buying drink or smokes or a big loan of scratch cards

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    Mute P.J. Nolan
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    Nov 13th 2023, 9:19 AM

    Ha ha but only someone who is tight with money would keep a money diary in the first place.
    Do you think someone who throws money around on drink, smokes and scratch cards would actually have the discipline to keep one?

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    Mute Rob Cahill
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    Nov 13th 2023, 10:59 AM

    I would honestly be too scared to do this.. I have no idea how much I spend a week and I don’t want to know either.

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    Mute
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    Nov 13th 2023, 8:03 PM

    I’m buying nothing. There you go. You’re welcome

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    Mute
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    Nov 13th 2023, 8:06 PM

    Is Jesus Birthday not spending season. Ssshh don’t mention religion lads

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