WE’VE ALL seen painful TV footage of tragic villagers drowned or dispossessed
by seasonal floods in Bangladesh or Assam. And even of English townsfolk, shaken
out of their Northern European complacency this autumn by the cruel rain gods.
So how do I dare argue that flooding can be a good thing?
Well, only if I add a serious adjective—controlled. The uncontrolled
variety we normally witness are, after all, a mixture of unacknowledged human
activity and unfortunate geography that we lazily label “natural”. Controlled
flooding, as a by-product of proper management, is a very different animal with
much to teach…
