Writing After the Flood - A Biosphere Project Blog

The small village in southern Belgium where I was writing this post, in an old house next to the Ourthe River.

Dear friends,

A week ago, I was on a writing retreat.

That week, I was able to stay in a large house in a village in southeastern Belgium, in the Ourthe Valley. The house belongs to the parents of some good friends, and I feel grateful and privileged to have been able to spend a week here in seclusion, focusing on my writing.

It is an old house, situated next to a small castle, and once part of the castle’s estate. The Ourthe River flows nearby, just across the road. It is a beautiful valley, and as soon as you leave the village along the path that follows the river, lovely spots appear in the narrow valley.

The Ourthe Valley, just outside the village.

The surroundings are beautiful and peaceful, and ideal for me to focus on writing for a week. But the beauty and tranquility almost make one forget that this village was the scene of a dramatic flood nearly five years ago, in the summer of 2021. That flood submerged the entire village, resulting in the destruction of most of the houses here.

The Ourthe River is known for flooding here, but this was exceptional: the disaster was part of a series of dramatic floods that struck several countries in Western Europe during those weeks. Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and the southern Netherlands were particularly hard-hit by what is called a “water bomb”: a downpour lasting several days caused by a stationary low-pressure system.

Months’ worth of rain fell in just a few days. In the municipality of Jalhay in the province of Liège, for example, 271 liters of water per square meter fell in just 48 hours, and in Spa, 217 liters per square meter.

As a result of this deluge, several smaller rivers, such as the Ourthe and the Vesder in Belgium or the Ahr and the Erft in Germany, turned into raging torrents that swept away everything in their path and completely destroyed countless towns. The disaster claimed the lives of 180 people in Germany and 39 in Belgium. It was one of the greatest natural disasters in post-war Europe, and a shock to regions that faced unprecedented devastation as a result of climate disruption. It was a moment when the climate crisis suddenly came very close and became particularly real. The potential for destruction and loss of human life became painfully clear.

The devastation in Pepinster, Belgium, following the floods in July 2021. Source: Wikipedia, © European Union

And also the beautiful old house where I wrote this was not spared: in the center of this village, the water rose more than two meters above the level of the sidewalk, which means it must have risen at least five or six meters higher than normal—which is astonishing. The destruction was total. The house itself remained standing, sturdy as it was built, but the interior on the ground floor was a shambles. The cleanup took months, and all the family members spent days sorting through and disposing of debris. And the sludge left behind after a flood is no ordinary mud and can be quite toxic: a poisonous mixture of everything the water encounters on its relentless path through houses, garages, basements, factories, warehouses, and so on. All kinds of chemicals get mixed together into a cocktail that can be particularly vicious. It can take years for a local ecosystem to recover from such an assault, which goes far beyond 'ordinary' water damage.

But nature has incredible resilience, and so do people. Disasters often bring out the best in people, as we know, and solidarity and creativity help us cope with the calamity and repair the damage, aided by systems we’ve created to help absorb these kinds of shocks: national disaster relief funds, insurance systems, and so on.

Here in this village, for instance, there is now no visible trace left of the devastation five years ago, except for the stone memorial plaque on the facade of a house in the center. The only thing that stands out if you look closely is that most houses have new doors and windows. Otherwise, it’s as if nothing happened. And that’s good news, of course: life goes on here, people have their homes back, and I was able to sit here writing in this beautiful house, which has also been completely renovated on the ground floor, and where the comfort is now perhaps even greater than before the disaster. Resilience, certainly. I am impressed, grateful, and amazed.

Commemorative stone plaque depicting the flood in the village

But that resilience may also have a downside: a certain degree of forgetfulness.

In the immediate aftermath of this disaster, the growing disruption of the climate took center stage in European media and politics for a time, and there seemed to be a growing awareness of the scale of the catastrophe that might (in fact: will for sure) be heading our way. That was far too late but still somewhat hopeful: finally, or so it seemed for a moment, a new wind would blow through the European institutions, and the climate crisis would be taken seriously in a way that would initiate real change in political and economic decision-making.

(Note: those who follow my blog know that I don’t like the term “climate crisis.” I agree with many experts that what we call the ‘climate crisis’ is merely the tip of the iceberg, and that we must view this disruption within the context of what is actually a much more comprehensive crisis, which I prefer to call the ‘biosphere crisis.’ See my essays “Let Us Not Talk About the Climate Crisis Any Longer,” Part One and Part Two.)

Work had already begun on a European “Green New Deal,” and various initiatives seemed to be in the works to strive more in Europe for a new relationship between our industrial economies and what we call “the environment”—an endlessly flawed term that already indicates how distorted our perception is in this regard. Even all those initiatives were ultimately far from sufficient, but for a moment it seemed as though the beginnings of a turnaround might be possible.

But things turned out differently: as the years passed, the damage was repaired, and the memory of the disaster faded, the issue of the climate crisis and the other ecological crises we face receded once again into the background of national and European politics. Among other things, the war in Ukraine and the accompanying energy crisis led to a dramatic decline in commitment to “green politics” in Europe. But elsewhere in the world as well, the ecological “meta-crisis” is receiving less and less attention, now that we are witnessing a growing process of destabilization and chaos worldwide that instills fear in people. Recent research has shown that global media coverage of climate disasters has declined dramatically, even though the number of such disasters is only increasing. Almost every week, somewhere in the world, there is a disaster comparable in scale and damage to the “water bomb” in Europe in July 2021. Floods, droughts, heat waves, and extreme weather events are increasing year by year, but coverage of them in the media is decreasing in inverse proportion, and denial seems to be on the rise again worldwide—something I honestly did not expect. And that is a great pity. So here we are again, waiting for a disaster of equal magnitude (or worse) before people, countries, and institutions in Europe and elsewhere become aware of it once more: we face a colossal challenge that demands a transition of unprecedented scale regarding just about everything we do and don’t do on this planet. Looking away won’t help; on the contrary.

For now, I am grateful that I am sometimes allowed to stay here, to concentrate on my work in this beautiful house in this magnificent valley, and to find inspiration during daily walks in the surrounding area. Beauty can and must be our guide, leading us back to a sense of agency and creativity—not just after a disaster but before it—so that we can prevent those disasters or at least mitigate them. 

Beauty is an aspect of love, and it will be only that love that can make us believe again that a different future is possible.

Thank you for reading, and until the next episode,

All the best to you,

Filip

A rosebush in the center of the village, May 2026.

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