Hartmut Del Missier, a descendant of Italians that moved to Germany to work in the building of dikes, was born and lives on German Hallig Hooge, a one-and-a-half hours shuttle by ferry from the coast of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany. Halligen are small islands without dikes in the North sea's Wadden Sea in the district of Nordfriesland.
The 64-year old works as a tourist relation manager on the island that is a popular spot for bird watchers and tourists. The Halligen draw birds on their migratory routes roughly twenty thousand greylag geese visit Hooge every year for their rich soil, as they are regularly inundated by floods. That is normal for the inhabitants and no reason for concern as their settlements are secured by „Warften", dikes around the housing complexes. But irregularly even the nine settlements on the 2.23 sq miles island, which levels only 5 meters above the normal sea level, are completely swallowed by severe storms. This “Land unter” occurs around 10 times per year and with climate change the frequency and severity of those incidents rises.
What has climate change done here?
"I personally think that the storms have increased. In the past, they occurred during the day; nowadays, they happen more at night. The waves have become higher. In the meantime, the dikes have been raised continuously. The major storm surge was in 2013, when the last dike raising had just been completed. In 2008. And now they are raising the dikes again. The dikes were raised from 1962 to 1969, then again from around 1994 to 2008. And now, after the storm in 2013, they're doing it again. You can see that the sea level is continuing to rise. You can feel it. And we don't know what the future holds for us in 30 or 40 years. We don't know."
What do you think world leaders have to do now to stop things from getting worse and to help us adapt?
"As I said, 2013 was a major storm surge; the dikes had just been reinforced, and now all the dikes on the ten Halligs need to be raised. But the planning process is moving too slowly. The dike we are sitting on now took four years to build, and actually, the average sea level doesn't stop; it can rise every day, and high floods can come at any time. We should actually raise a dike every year. Climate change doesn't wait. And if they continue to raise the dikes at this pace, they will be finished with the dike raises by 2050. So, urgency is required."
Life expectancy 2023
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