Molly Quell reports: Blowing in the Wind: Why the Netherlands Is Sinking
Over the centuries, windmills built to drain peatland for agriculture have been causing the ground to steadily sink.
This subsidence means that in a low-lying nation famous for engineering its way around rising seas, the ground is also sinking lower, creating huge problems for the structures built on top. At a certain point, building foundations begin to crack, sinkholes appear, roads destabilize, and the risk of flooding increases. More construction results in more pressing down of the peat — and more subsidence.
A 2016 report from the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, a research group that advises the government, estimated that the total damage to the country’s buildings and infrastructure from subsidence, as well as the cost to restore weak foundations, could top $22 billion, or 20 billion euros, by 2050.
What’s worse, the sinking may actually be contributing to climate change: A drop in the peat soil of just one centimeter results in the emission of about 9 tons of carbon dioxide per acre, says Gert Jan van den Born, a policy researcher at PBL. That accounts for a large part of overall CO2 emissions in the agricultural sector.