Interview in DN’s member’s magazine
The latest issue of Natur og Miljø, the member magazine of the Danish Society for Nature Conservation, focuses under the headline “The Water Is Coming” on how we manage water in cities and in the countryside at a time when climate change is truly making itself felt. For generations, Denmark has tried to keep the water out — with dikes, drainage, and the straightening of watercourses — but that approach is reaching its limits: rainfall has increased markedly since the late 1800s, and the sea around the country is expected to rise by up to 120–130 centimetres this century.
In that context, I had the pleasure of contributing a number of reflections and concrete examples of future nature-based solutions, building on the project Vandets Veje (The Ways of Water), which I have led in collaboration with the Danish Association of Architects. In the article, I point out that we have shaped the landscape to a very large extent according to our own needs — straightening watercourses, draining land, and building in low-lying areas — but to a far lesser extent shaped ourselves according to the landscape’s own dynamics. The consequence is that in many places today, we work against natural processes rather than with them.