Imagine a normal Thursday morning in an otherwise unusually mild and rainy February suddenly turning into a nightmare. That's exactly what happened to an elderly couple in the small town of Pollestres in southwestern France when Storm Nils hit, literally tearing their house apart. The roof of their house was torn off, carried seven meters into the air and thrown ten meters away, as if it were a hurricane that had not only mistaken its route but also the season. Although the couple escaped unharmed, they found themselves homeless overnight. At the same time, heavy rains and floods in Portugal caused 16 deaths, directly or indirectly linked to the same storm. In the city of Coimbra, the Mondego River overflowed its banks, forcing the evacuation of 3,000 people and leading to the resignation of the interior minister. Although it is February and we are in a temperate climate zone, disasters in the Mediterranean region are unfolding as if it were August somewhere in the Caribbean.

Global temperatures have already risen by about 1.1°C compared to pre-industrial times.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states with high confidence that climate change is increasing both the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall in Europe. In some regions, the intensity of extreme rainfall has increased by up to 22 % over the past 50 years, significantly increasing the risk of flooding in vulnerable areas.

These alarming events raise a clear question: can we still try to tame nature using traditional methods? According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), we should focus on Nature-based solutions (NbS). These are measures aimed at protecting, sustainably managing and restoring natural or modified ecosystems that effectively and adaptively address societal challenges while simultaneously delivering benefits for human well-being and biodiversity. Hans Brouwer of the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat summed it up perfectly when he said that „Land and nature always win“ and that resisting the forces of nature where they are strongest is futile.

The Netherlands, a country historically prone to flooding, is a pioneer in this approach. In response to devastating floods in 1993 and 1995 that displaced 220,000 people, the government launched a massive national program in 2000 called „Room for the River.“ The program ran from 2006 to 2019 at a total cost of €2.3 billion. Instead of endlessly raising dykes on soft peat soils, which is environmentally problematic, engineers decided to give rivers more room. They created retention areas along the Rhine, Meuse, Waal, and IJssel river basins that can safely accommodate flows of up to 16,000 m³ per second in preparation for climate change. This project created approximately 2,000 hectares of new natural areas in more than 30 locations and provided flood protection that should last until around 2050. However, the „Room for the River 2.0“ program is now underway, as the original plans did not fully anticipate the consequences of climate change, such as falling water levels and less frequent flooding, which is deteriorating the ecological quality of the areas.

Harmonizing with nature to protect communities and critical infrastructure is also a key objective of the European project NBSINFRA, which will run until August 2026. This innovative project explores how to protect urban critical infrastructure from both natural and man-made threats by co-designing and monitoring solutions with communities in five „urban labs“: Fingal (Ireland), Cologne (Germany), Ruse (Bulgaria), Aveiro (Portugal) and Prague (Czech Republic).

In Cologne, Germany, researchers are documenting the benefits of these solutions in practice. The city experienced major flooding on the Rhine in the 1990s and flooding in the Wupper and Erft basins in 2021. In response, the Cologne Drainage Authority (StEB Köln) implemented a network of measures that have made it possible to most of the city protected from floods with up to a 200-year return period. Researchers Ali Barrett and Christopher Munschauer explain that nature-based solutions not only offer protection, but can filter pollution, preserve biodiversity, and provide citizens with space for leisure activities. In addition, the presence of trees and vegetation provides a cooling effect on cities and moderates temperatures.

It is important to understand that this is not a competition between traditional (grey) infrastructure and green infrastructure. Researchers argue that protecting cities requires a combination of both approaches and the dilemma is rather the choice between investing in prevention or doing nothing. Prevention requires immediate costs for construction and maintenance, but a disaster is a one-time event that brings not only huge financial losses but also the destruction of lives. Preventive measures therefore function like an insurance policy with year-round benefits for the well-being of people, fauna and flora.

Another example is the urban laboratory in the Irish city of Swords, which is facing rapid population growth and is prone to flooding. Originally planned as a green belt around the city, which was primarily intended to improve the quality of life during urban expansion, it is now being examined for its ability to serve as a water retention area during floods. Beatriz Martinez-Pastor of University College Dublin points out that Well-designed natural solutions can significantly reduce floodwater volume, thereby minimizing the scale and impact of flood protection engineering structures. A key element of this pilot project is collaboration and design with the public. Many people still fear that green solutions will not be sufficiently resistant to the elements, so citizen participation in the creation of designs is key to their acceptance.

Local history and collective memory also play a key role in promoting natural solutions. Hans Brouwer reminds us that the culture, history and ambitions of the people in a given area must be closely linked to the proposed measures. In the Netherlands, for example, in the 1980s, people did not see the rivers as the main threat, but the sea and its storms. The reluctance of families living in designated flood zones was eventually overcome through dialogue and economic guarantees from the government.

In addition to the local context, however, experts point out another obstacle, which is not a lack of technical knowledge, but the implementation and governance itself. An NbS expert from Berlin points out that currently, natural solutions are often perceived as just „something nice we could have.“. Without national legislation, the implementation of natural solutions depends solely on political will, which varies across regions. Nature-based solutions require cross-sectoral collaboration, but many institutions are not structurally adapted to such integration, with short-term funding directly disrupting long-term planning.

As winter storms rip roofs off houses and rivers flood into streets during unusually mild seasons, the cost of our inaction is becoming a tangible reality. Experts agree that a binding national framework, backed by European regulation, could prevent officials from turning their efforts into a Sisyphean task. The question is no longer whether nature-based solutions work, but whether our governance and administration can keep up with such a rapidly changing climate. JRi&CO2AI