Let's stop calculating the climate impact on an abstract carbon footprint, and start on the centimeters of water that fell in the Klodzko Basin. Let the corporations and oil giants pay for the flood damage, and let the government audit the developers who build estates in flood plains, says Jan Mencwel.
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
Paulina Januszewska: You have long called for responsible water management and climate policy, which mitigate the effects of warming global temperatures, including floods. We at Political Criticism do too - but the changes are not coming. Instead, worst-case scenarios are coming true, as in Lower Silesia recently. Don't you feel tired of repeating the same thing over and over again?
Jan Mencwel: I feel that this discussion has entered a whole new level. Although I wrote a book about water, I have learned a lot in the past week, especially about flood control. In fact, I was not fully aware, I had no idea where we were. And that's literally - because geographically.
What does that mean?
It seemed to me that Poland was a fairly safe place after all. Yes - we felt the effects of climate change, such as droughts and the risk of floods, but overall it wasn't that bad compared to other countries. I thought: "fortunately, we are not in the south of Europe, where everything that is happening due to the increase in global temperature is much more severe."
Now I know that this was the wrong approach, because what happened in Lower Silesia shows what a huge threat flooding is to us - right here in the heart of the continent - and that it is a direct result of the climate crisis. The Genoese low has been inflated by an incredible amount of water as a result of evaporation. Why? Because the sea was at record heat. This is a scenario that will be repeated and in the future could prove to be much worse in its consequences than it is now. This is the first conclusion.
And the next?.
With the level of precipitation that has occurred in the south of the country, we are unable to defend ourselves against water. The geographic location of the Klodzko Basin makes it impossible to implement one hundred percent effective flood protection, guaranteeing the residents of Klodzko or Ladek-Zdroj that their towns will not be flooded. Dozens of towns are in a similar situation. And frankly, it is not entirely clear what should be done to save them.
Maybe a strategic map of the places most at risk of flooding should be created first, in order to develop specific strategies?.
It seems to me that the answers that have so far been served in such situations are completely inadequate. The best proof is the fact that billions of zlotys were pumped into various investments in flood protection, and still these places were flooded. Admittedly, it was possible to save Wroclaw - most likely thanks to the Racibórz polder - but there is simply room for effective protection there. You could give a huge area to the river, resettle a small town.
Meanwhile, in the Klodzko Basin, for example, there is no such area anymore. While in the past floods happened, say, once every 100 years - so successive generations could somehow digest their effects, now repeated inundations are unbearable. The frequency of these events has changed. There was a big flood in 1997, then a slightly smaller one in 2010, and now again one like it was less than three decades ago. We can see that this area is simply becoming a very risky place to live.
Instead of plans for a safer future, there are claims that rebuilding after the floods could result in budget amendments and the depletion or cancellation of transfersocial benefits such as 800+, meaning that those affected would pay extra for the tragedy thathas befallen them. However, in an interview with Wprost, you said that it would be most fair if those whowho contributed to the climate crisis paid for the rebuilding of the cities, but also - this is from me - the adaptation measures. That is, who.
This seems to me to be a fairly obvious conclusion, although probably not so at all in our political realities. We are dealing with a catastrophe, the scale of which is clearly and directly increased by climate change. Meanwhile, in Rzeczpospolita, Lukasz Warzecha writes that floods have always happened. Yes, they have happened - and are now slowly becoming the new norm. In addition, scientists have calculated that the severity of this particular disaster by conservative estimates was increased by 20 percent due to climate change. Therefore, at least 20 percent of the cost of the damage should be paid by those who contribute most to the climate crisis. It's simple math.
Let's stop converting harmful climate impacts into an abstract carbon footprint, and start with the centimeters of water that have fallen in the Klodzko Basin. Let corporations like Amazon and the oil giants pay for the flood damage.
In the same interview you also mentioned, climate change adaptation requires the government to make many controversial decisions and expose itself to various interest groups. What are these decisions and groups?.
In the first place, we would benefit from a decent audit of what investments have been made in floodplains and which have resulted in flooding and reduced retention. I believe that it is necessary to examine the scale of construction of developer settlements (block housing and terraced houses for rent) or tourist settlements, created and built on floodplains. Unfortunately, there is a lot of this in the Klodzko or Jeleniogórska Kotlina. In Jelenia Gora, developers were said to be digging up embankments to protect their properties from flooding, in effect causing tragedies elsewhere. These are unacceptable situations.
Developers are the first interest group that needs to be looked at, because their activities are making it impossible to effectively protect historic cities like Klodzko. If the water spills outside the city, it will be safer. But if residential or hotel infrastructure is built in the suburbs, preventing the river from spilling over, the result is that the wave reaches the old town square and destroys it.
"Technically and economically, we can't build no matter how gigantic and innovative facilitieswhichwouldprotect us from drought and stormy rains. But investments in green-blue infrastructure, restoring retention and proper urban planning in cities that are already too concreted over can significantly mitigate the effects of the phenomena thatwe are seeing," - Dr. Andrzej Walga, president of the Association of Hydrologistof Poland, told me in 2020. Well, that's right - responsible land use planning and housing policy are not that far from the climate. I understand that a ban on construction in floodplains mcould partially address both flood and drought risks. What else.
The absurdity of the whole situation is illustrated quite well by the story of a housing development near Wroclaw, which was built on a floodplain. Not only that - it is located on a street... Zalewowa street, and everyone is surprised that it was affected by flooding. We have a huge systemic problem in Poland with cities sprawling into the suburbs. Unfortunately, this is directly related to astronomically high housing prices and the lack of social housing in cities.
Almost no one can afford an apartment - not even in the center, but in any part of the city, because the costs are absurd. As a result, settlements of cottages or just blocks of flats are being built in a field somewhere outside the city, which generates a great many problems - including precisely the fact that they are irresistible not only to major floods, but even smaller torrential rains. For example, in Warsaw's Zawady, the historic flood terrace of the Vistula, flooding occurs, and the basements of the new housing estates that have been built there are being washed away. Meanwhile, this area should serve us as a polder, where water should spill over during large surges and rainfall. In a word: either we plan housing infrastructure in a way that responds to these phenomena, or we stay with what is there now, which is that anyone can build practically anything they want, wherever they want.
We all pay for the effects of such policies later. Spatial regulations are not relics of communism, but something that is being done in virtually all Western European countries, policing development, investing in housing policy - so that in city centers people have an alternative to the private market and don't have to build or buy apartments in a segment under the city in an area that may be flooded at the next flood.
You have mentioned polders, conjugated by all cases in the context of flooding in Lower Silesia. But their opponents cite as evidencethe fact that they failedto avoid flooding altogether. "Why didn't polders worky?" - this is one of the clickbait headlinesof the media, suggesting that perhaps these are not effective tools in the fight against big water. Is this actually the case? How do polders actually work?
A polder is an area close to a river that is undeveloped on a daily basis, not used industrially, or at most agriculturally. It serves as a reserve in case a high wave comes, creating an opportunity for the river to spill over. In a word: for the formation of polders it is not necessary to create some great infrastructure. It is enough, for example, to move the floodgates away from the river, giving it space. On a daily basis, water will not flow there. It will flood the area only during elevated levels. This means that you can usually walk your dog there, pick mushrooms, or even do some farming, and in an emergency simply avoid the area.
This is a win-win solution for nature as well, since polders attract rare species of plants, insects, birds. However, we must, first of all, for our own safety, refrain from developing areas along the river. No single-family houses and estates on floodplains - even though developers tempt potential buyers with a beautiful view.
However, I will emphasize that polders are only one solution. They will not protect us completely from floods. We simply have to realize that part of the scene has to be given back to nature, otherwise we will have to leave it altogether.
Renaturalization, restoration of wetlands, retention and investment in green and blue infrastructure - these are the main tasks of water management. What specific measures should follow?
Looking at the Klodzko Basin, we can start at the very top, or rather, the mountains. The most torrential rainfall turned out to be in the Sněžník massif. The green-blue infrastructure has actually been there for a long time, and that's where retention should have started - the forests should have absorbed some of the water. However, this has not happened, as intensive logging has been carried out there for several years. Foresters explain that this is related to the reconstruction of forest stands, but everyone can see what it really looks like. One only has to go to the mountains to see with one's own eyes that instead of a trail, one walks along a wide gutter that has been rutted by machinery designed for logging and timber removal. During a heavy rain, such a gutter turns into a swollen creek.
As a first point of responsible water management, I would therefore mention returning the forests in the mountains (but also everywhere else) to their retention function, allowing them to hold back the rain and making the water in the river not rise so quickly. I will point out again that with the amount of rain that fell in the Klodzko Basin, even if the Amazon Forest were there, there would still be flooding. But would it, to quote Mariusz Pudzianowski - would it do anything? Not necessarily. The flood could have been somewhat smaller, because the mountain rivers would have been slower to rise, which would not have been unaffected by the scale of damage or the ability to prepare for flooding.
What else should we do, with better preparation for such situations? .
I am in favor of restoration of rivers that have been straightened. To put it in a nutshell: when a river is squeezed with concrete to make it flow straight, the same amount of water creates a higher wave than when it has wide opportunities to spill sideways, it has to flow into meanders. The wave also then simply slows down, lowers or stops at some point. We need to conduct an analysis of where in Poland it is possible to restore the natural meandering of rivers.
Will these solutions also protect us - or rather allow us to adapt - to droughts that co-occur with floods? .
When we take better care to protect forests in the mountains, where most rain falls, the water will be better absorbed not only in heavy rain, but also in ordinary rain. By doing so, it will more slowly saturate the rivers flowing down from the mountains, providing stability to the entire system. This is beneficial from the point of view of flooding and from the point of view of drought. In the same way, river renourishment works - water in a surge situation pours into the wetlands, and in a drought it flows into the rivers. In this way we have a natural storehouse that responds to the effects of climate change, but only to a certain extent. For it is not the case that we will restore the rivers to their natural course and can ignore the climate crisis and there will be no floods at all. We can only mitigate the consequences of disasters, and in parallel we must get serious about climate policy and decarbonizing the economy.
Did the floodingin Lower Silesia show that anything in the media or political narrative has changedin terms of approaching climate change?
Certainly, the link between climate change and the floods has featured very prominently in the media. Obviously there is some polarization in this regard, but while I have no research to support this, only my own observations and intuitions, I think that for the ordinary person, not necessarily having an opinion on climate change, the frequency and severity of the floods is a signal that something is very wrong. It is known that there is a water line on the church in Klodzko from 1897 - only that it was 100 years earlier. I am sure that quite a few people recognize this, and that public pressure to make serious climate policy will grow.
As for politicians, on the other hand, a while ago I read the tweet I almost passed on, which was written by Ryszard Petru. It turned out that even a hardened supporter of neoliberalism like him is advocating the creation of a special fund for those harmed by the effects of climate change, to which the industries most harmful to the climate are to contribute. To me, this is a good sign, indicating that more and more people are noticing that other than by holding dirty business accountable, we will not deal with any crisis.
To what extent, in the case of the flooding in Lower Silesia, did sluggishness, incompetence, and perhaps reassurance by Donald Tusk that there was no reason to panic fail?
I'm not inside the Prime Minister's head, but it seems to me that he is simply representative of a generation that tends to downplay climate and environmental issues. This attitude assumes that there may be a problem, but "without exaggeration." As I mentioned, I myself somewhat succumbed to this thinking in the context of Poland withstanding the crisis better than southern countries. However, when I saw forecasts of heavy rainfall, I recalled the catastrophic flooding two years ago in Germany, where entire houses were swept downstream. So I knew that a similar situation could happen in our country as well.
It seems to me that Donald Tusk, and politicians in his camp in general, do not understand the magnitude of the danger facing us. We cannot ignore the risks that cataclysms will happen, that they are likely to become increasingly severe. This is not the world of the 20th century, where such events were incidental and we always dealt with them somehow. I think the experience of Lower Silesia could have a traumatic and sobering effect on Tusk and his team, causing the government to start taking policy for times of climate crisis seriously.
Were other countries, whichwere also affected by the floodflood, in some sposway better prepared for the flood? Can we in ogat all draw such conclusions? Or is the fact that so many countriesare suffering proofof Europe's failure to implement the Green Arcad?
Looking at what happened in the Czech Republic, it is clear that things are worse there than in Poland. Large cities like Ostrava are flooded, so the flooding unfortunately seems even more catastrophic in its effects. I don't know what it's like in Austria, because I haven't followed the situation there closely. But if you look at the stories from two years ago - that is, the floods that hit Germany, Austria, partly Poland, but also Romania at the time - you will see that in the most privileged part of the world, which Europe is considered to be, we are not immune to the effects of climate change, but in fact completely defenseless against disasters. We have developed really good climate policies, but we are not implementing them.
I will remind you that, among other things, the Tusk government opposed the introduction of the Nature Restoration Law, which would, for example, allow the creation of floodplains, restore wetlands, protect forests and return a certain percentage of Poland's land to nature. This is a condition to meet the EU goal, torpedoed by our government. Maybe now something will brighten up for ours and other leaders opposed to similar solutions. After all, so far there has been no unanimity on this issue.
So neither technology nor economics will save us, only solutions based on imitation and reproduction of nature? .
So far we have acted in such a way that we put up large infrastructure facilities and in a disaster situation we pray that they will save us, while at the same time taking away floodplains from rivers with the other hand, destroying nature where it can perform a retention function. This is completely illogical, but the flood has emphatically shown us that we need sobering up and cooperation between infrastructure and nature, not a purely engineering approach. Because it, contrary to the belief of those in power, is not innovative, but outdated.
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Jan Mencwel -Polish cultural animator, publicist, commentator, social activist and urban activist, city councilor of Warsaw, co-founder of the City Is Ours association. Author of the books Betonosis. How Polish cities are being destroyed and Hydrozagadka. Who is taking Poland's water and how to get it back..
