3. Time to use insurance to stop people building on flood plains (1600 р.С.)

No one would build London today where its founders did. At the mouth of the Thames, it is threatened by the rush of water when there is flooding inland. On the edge of the North Sea, it is buffeted by sea surges when storms blow up offshore. The supremacy of water-borne trade that once dictated its location has ebbed: the cranes that dot ted busy docks have given way to financial skyscrapers, housing and excavations for the 2012 Olympics.

London is lucky. The centre of modern Britain’s wealth, it has been powerfully protected from the sea by the great Thames Barrier, and against trouble upstream by sturdy ce ment dykes. Not so Oxford and other towns in southern England, desolated by river flooding on a scale not seen in 60 years. Not so Sheffield and their Yorkshire neighbours, which suffered even worse floods after heavy rainfall.

South-central Europe is fighting a heat wave fierce enough to cause forests to combust. In China, India and Pak istan over a thousand have died in floods in the past few weeks alone. Global warming may be

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changing the world’s climate but personal and political choices determine how much damage it can do.

Britain’s politicians are under attack. The Britain`s govern ment, repeatedly warned, should have focused harder on flood defences. The local-government bodies and water companies involved in flood management have failed to сoordinate and planners have been too willing to spread cement over land that used to absorb water. Sewers and drains have become antiquated and overloaded, and power, water and sewage plants unsuitable to floods.

Behind these failures lies unwritten agreement made half a century ago, under which insurers have covered almost all homeowners against flooding at no extra charge. The government, in return, promised to maintain flood de fences. With the true cost of flooding thus concealed, develop ers have been allowed virtually unchecked to build homes on flood plains in England and individuals have had no reason not to buy them. That deal has begun to break down, as claims from flooding increase, more reliable flood-mapping becomes available and competition among insurers makes the subsidy from homeowners on high ground to low-lying ones less tenable.

A tenth of English homes stand on flood plains. Their own ers bought them on the assumption that they would be insur able against flooding, among other risks. The government and insurers should therefore find a way of continuing to offer them cover. But for new developments, insurance firms must be free to price the risk of flooding as accurately and transpar ently as they can. If it costs more to insure flood-prone proper­ties, their price will be lower, and developers less keen to build them. That would be good: now that flooding seems to be a regular feature of the climatic calendar, mankind needs to start moving uphill.

Notes:

to buffet — бить extra charge — дополнительная

off-shore — от берега плата

to give way — уступать to conceal — скрывать

to ebb — прийти в упадок claim — иск

sturdy — крепкий available — доступный

dyke — дамба subsidy — дотация, плата

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sewer — коллектор tenable — разумный

antiquated — устаревший is not so much — не столько

insurer — страховщик to underwrite — гарантировать

assumption — предположение flood–prone — подвергаться

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