Coping with climate change: How the Dutch are facing down rising waters

No place in Europe is under greater threat than this waterlogged country, but the Netherlands’ solution is to let water in, where possible, not hope to subdue Mother Nature; to live with the

The wind over the canal stirred up whitecaps and rattled cafe umbrellas. Rowers strained towards a finish line and spectators hugged the shore. Henk Ovink, hawkish, wiry, shaven-headed, watched from a VIP deck, one eye on the boats, the other, as usual, on his phone.

Ovink is the country’s globe-trotting salesman-in-chief for Dutch expertise on rising water and climate change. Like cheese in France or cars in Germany, climate change is a business in the Netherlands.