Fighting water with water

When a forest fire rages, one option is to simply start another fire: a controlled burn of trees and shrubs, to deny further fuel. It is literally fighting fire with fire.

This week, as heavy rainfall claimed lives in Indonesia and the UK, and swept away homes and power in Oregon and northern California, politicians and public once again asked what can be done about flooding.   

One radical solution can be found in nature, because you can fight floods with more floods. 

A decade ago, in Somerset, western England, a flood-prone patch of the Steart Peninsula, in the National Trust’s Holnicote Estate, was surrendered to the sea. A 200m gap was bulldozed through flood defences, farmland surrendered, and the waters allowed to flow.

But now, when the tide rises high in those parts, instead of filling living rooms, it flows in to salt marshes. These act as a giant sponge, soaking up water, slowing its progress and protecting flood-prone villages nearby. 

It is an extension of an idea from The Netherlands, called ‘room for the river’: if you can’t stop the flood, you give it somewhere to go.      

Realists may point out that the bigger fix is tackling the climate change that causes extreme weather, and they would be right. But the Steart project is a model for the UK and elsewhere. These wetlands protect inland areas, act as a carbon sink, and give a new home to bird life. 

Such schemes will not work everywhere, but The Conduit exists to highlight new solutions and bring together the people who can make them happen.

Nature-based fixes, often part-funded by the insurance industry, are a growing part of the global arsenal against climate change. If you’d like to know more about how that can work, see our recent talk here. And we will be bringing together more key changemakers next year, through our Climate and Insurance conference. To see what else we have planned in 2025, click here.   

Yours,

Radical Realist