I’ve seen how deadly floods are devastating Europe – we are not prepared for what’s next
This is an extract of this week’s Down to Earth newsletter, to get more exclusive environmental journalism in your inbox every Thursday sign up here
It’s common to think about the climate crisis as something that will happen in the future, in the global south.
But for several months I’ve been investigating the devastating impact of extreme flooding in Europe for my Guardian series The floods. What I saw, through my travels to Chesterfield, England, Germany’s Ahr valley and Wallonia in Belgium, was that the climate emergency is in Europe, now. And it’s been happening for years.
Climate breakdown increases the risk of flooding, because hot air retains water, which increases precipitation. Climate scientists have found a 1C temperature increase means that 7% more water is retained in the air. The 2021 floods which devastated central Europe, specifically Belgium and Germany, were made more likely, some researchers think, by the climate crisis.
The aftermath was akin to a disaster movie. In the Ahr valley, a picturesque tourist region known for its hiking and pinot noir, the water level is believed to have reached up to 10 metres on the night of 14 July, 2021. The destruction was still clear to see. Mangled railway tracks loomed like twisted rollercoasters. Bridges were demolished by the force of the water. Entire houses were washed away with their inhabitants trapped inside.
And what’s terrifying is that floods of that magnitude could happen again in central Europe – in fact, some scientists think they will happen once or twice before 2050. But the people are not prepared.
More on what I found, after this week’s climate reads.
Essential reads
Brutal heatwaves and submerged cities: what a 3C world would look like
I understand climate scientists’ despair – but stubborn optimism may be our only hope | Christiana Figueres
What are the most powerful climate actions you can take? The expert view
In focus
I arrived in Brussels on a frozen January afternoon. I was there for a sombre occasion: the memorial service for Rosa Reichel (pictured above), who died in the 2021 floods in Belgium. The service took place on what should have been Rosa’s 18th birthday. Instead, she was swept away by a flash flood while at a summer camp. I was there to meet her friend Benjamin Van Bunderen Robberechts, 17, who jumped into the water to try to save her, narrowly avoiding drowning himself. Now Ben’s a climate activist, travelling the world to raise awareness of the climate emergency as part of his Climate Justice for Rosa campaign.
As I travelled through Belgium’s Vesdre valley, I saw a community still reeling. Many had fallen victim to cowboy builders and were living in halffinished building sites, years on from the floods. They’d only been able to rebuild with the heroic efforts of unpaid volunteers. But alarmingly, people had rebuilt their homes almost exactly as before, without mitigation measures in place to protect them from future flooding. If the valley floods again, many of these homes will be destroyed – with further catastrophic loss of life.
In Germany, too, I saw similar shorttermist thinking. There’s even a term for it: flood dementia. The idea that catastrophic flooding will not happen in the same place twice, even when the conditions for those floods – steep hillsides, communities built too close to the water, impermeable bedrock with limited opportunities for drainage – means that they probably will. It’s a kind of magical thinking, and one that can prove fatal: in Germany, 188 people died in the 2021 floods. But in the Ahr, I also met two sisters and winemakers who were bucking the trend by relocating their vinery to the top of a hill, after narrowly escaping death during the floods.
And the UK is already seeing the fingerprints of climate breakdown in extreme weather events. In Chesterfield, I met the family of Maureen Gilbert, a beloved grandmother who died alone in her home during last October’s Storm Babet. Since Babet, the UK has equalled its record for the most named storms during a storm season, with four months of the storm season left to go. March 2024 was the hottest recorded globally, and the 10th month in a row to break records.
Climate scientists have warned that we are entering unprecedented territory. As the world gets warmer, biblical flooding won’t be a one-off, exceptional event, but a new normal. We are not prepared.
Composted Reads
The good news
Fast fashion is wasteful, and thrifting is flawed. The solution: swap!
Herd of 170 bison could help store CO2 equivalent of almost 2m cars, researchers say
‘It’s unbelievable the difference a path has made’: how volunteers are building a cycle network a yard at a time
The bad news
‘The stakes could not be higher’: world is on edge of climate abyss, UN warns
Four kids left: The Thai school swallowed by the sea
‘It just didn’t work’: how businesses are struggling with reuseable packaging
The change I made – Growing my own salad
Down to Earth readers on the ecofriendly changes they made for the planet
A simple tip this week from reader Lyn Wills, which benefits you and the planet: giving up plastic-wrapped salad leaves for some grown in your own garden.
“I started growing my own salad due to the abysmal quality and price of the salad bags in the supermarket, which go slimy a day or so after opening and often are very ‘stalky’,” says Wills.
You don’t even need a big patch to make it work, Wills is quick to stress. “I have a very small space which is sunny enough and I just grow and pick what I need. This year I planted a tray each of lettuce and beetroots, instead of seeds, the rocket and chives come back every year. It’s more foolproof than seeds but a bit more expensive.”
Let us know the positive change you’ve made in your life by replying to this newsletter, or emailing us on downtoearth@theguardian.com
Creature feature – Chimpanzee Profiling the Earth’s most at-risk animals
Population: 175,000-300,000Location: Forests of central AfricaStatus: Endangered
Highly social animals who can live to be older than 50, chimps are our closest cousins – we share about 98% of our genes. Threats include poaching and habitat loss – exacerbated by a slow reproductive rate. Ecotourism initiatives in Africa aim to protect chimps from poaching by providing alternative incomes for communities.
For more on wildlife at threat, visit the Age of Extinction page here
Picture of the week One image that sums up the week in environmental news
It’s hard to pick just one photograph from this beautiful Guardian gallery celebrating “eco-brutalist” architecture, but this shot of Paris’s dense but leafy Les Étoiles d’Ivry housing block wins out.
Each of the 13 photographs in the piece, taken across the world from Brazil to Bosnia, feature in the new book Brutalist Plants by Olivia Broome. “Brutalism can be this quite harsh, austere architecture style, but with nature involved, it balances it all out,” she says.
For more of the week’s best environmental pictures, catch up on The Week in Wildlife here
17 officers had been killed and “many” wounded – mostly by gunshots – in the first four months of this year.
In the worst attack, five officers were killed when armed criminals stormed a police station in the city’s north on 29 February. Videos of the mutilated victims spread on social media, the newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported. In one, it wrote, “the corpse of a policeman is seen lying on a wheelbarrow, his uniform soaked in blood”. Another shows an officer being beheaded. In a brazen show of defiance, criminals later returned to the station to demolish it with a Chinese front-end loader.
“It’s clear the [previous] government failed in its security mission. Everyone says the police are overwhelmed by the recent events,” said Lazarre. “There are neighbourhoods we used to go into easily but no longer can.”
William O’Neill, the UN’s top expert on human rights in Haiti, voiced amazement that Haiti’s outgunned and under-resourced police force had avoided being completely overpowered by criminals boasting a military-grade arsenal, largely smuggled in from the US. “It’s a minor miracle they’re still hanging on. I don’t know how they do it,” said O’Neill, who believes Haiti needs a 5,000-strong international security force to help the police restore order.
A UN-backed “multinational security support mission”, reportedly led by 1,000 Kenyan troops, is expected to be deployed to Haiti in the coming weeks to bolster the fight against the gangs although questions remain over how the force will be funded.
Part of the answer to how Haitian police are clinging on lies in the mettle of officers such as Stanley who are on the frontline of a lopsided struggle against gangs that run about 80% of the capital. For their troubles such officers generally receive no more than $100 (£79) a week.
That measly salary earns them a front row seat to a security collapse that has seen more than 2,500 people killed or injured this year alone and forced the airport and seaport to close.
Last weekend, another 4,500 people were forced to flee their homes in the capital, according to the UN migration agency, taking the number of people displaced by the chaos to about 100,000.
“The gangs are in charge,” admitted one former senior security official who believed things were so dire combat drones should be imported to eliminate gang leaders from above, “like in Afghanistan”.
A spokesperson for another police union, SPNH-17, this week called for the head of Haiti’s national police, Frantz Elbé, to resign over the “critical and catastrophic” situation after another attack on a police station, accusing top police officials of being complicit with the gangs.
Peter, another Port-au-Prince cop in his mid-20s, recalled being ambushed during a recent patrol by fighters with assault rifles. “It seemed like bullets were coming from everywhere at the same time,” said the police officer, who fled his vehicle with three colleagues and took shelter beside walls and street lamps.
The officers managed to repel the assailants after a long shootout but one was injured and taken to hospital. After the gun battle, Peter returned to his bullet-riddled vehicle and continued patrolling but he spent the next fortnight off work, rattled by the neardeath experience.
“I realised it could have been me who was injured or even killed,” he said. “Thank God it wasn’t me that day … I still haven’t told my mother.”
Lazarre admitted Haiti’s national police force was woefully ill-equipped for its battle against outlaws who flaunt their increasingly sophisticated arsenal in slick social media videos resembling those posted by Mexican cartels.
“If the police had more weapons they could respond better to the criminals,” said Lazarre. “The police is about to celebrate its 29th anniversary but they don’t even have one or two helicopters to fight the current battle.”
Peter said a lack of basic equipment meant some colleagues bought their own bulletproof vests or armour plates, shipping them to Haiti with the logistics company DHL. In the last three years, more than 3,000 officers have left their jobs as the security situation unravelled after the 2021 murder of President Jovenel Moïse. Many have abandoned the country altogether.
Haiti’s police have faced criticism for disappearing from the streets of Port-au-Prince since the rebellion began and abandoning citizens to their own fate. But the union spokesperson said officers were doing their best to fight back, “even though times are tough”.
Lazarre called for more “offensive action” to regain the initiative from armed groups. “When you’re in a football team, you can’t just defend. You have to attack too … You can’t play a 90-minute game just defending. Eventually, you’ll let in a goal.”
Stanley and Peter said they were determined to fight on and were proud to be part of Haiti’s police force, despite the dangers. “We are the armed arm of the citizens. We are their shield,” said Stanley.
But in a city now almost entirely controlled by criminals, the shadow of death was never far away, said Peter, who is his household’s sole breadwinner. “And when a policeman dies in service what’s left for the family?” he asked.
The Israeli military said it had worked throughout the seven-month war “to allow and facilitate the entry and delivery of extensive humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, out of its commitment to international humanitarian law”.
It added: “Each incident involving humanitarian aid convoys, facilities or personnel is being thoroughly examined, including those mentioned in the report, and according to the examination’s findings, lessons are learned and implemented in order to prevent reoccurrence of such incidents and if so required, command, disciplinary and other measures are taken against individuals responsible.”
Monday’s attack was claimed by a group calling itself Order 9, which said it had acted to stop supplies reaching Hamas and accused the Israeli government of giving “gifts” to the Islamist group.
It was not the first time that Israeli settlers have tried to stop the flow of aid to Gaza. Last week, demonstrators blocked a road near the desert town of
Mitzpe Ramon to protest against the delivery of aid lorries into Gaza.
This year, there were frequent demonstrations at crossings from Israel into Gaza, which hindered aid shipments into the territory. In March, the international court of justice ordered Israel to allow unimpeded access of food aid into Gaza.
• The second video embedded in this article was amended on 16 May 2024. An earlier version said that a convoy of around 50 trucks carrying oil, sugar and other supplies was attacked by Israeli soldiers; this should have said Israeli settlers.