Surprisingly full after my lunch of acorn seitan kebabs, sunflower-seed risotto and other vegan delights, we hopped aboard the Zonnetrein (Sun Train), a novel and sustainable mode of transport consisting of two connected solar-powered buses for taking visitors on sustainable guided tours of Nijmegen. As I looked onto the vast river Waal, which is the longest river in the Netherlands and spans up to 400m wide at points, it was easy to understand how it has shaped the city, both geographically and psychologically.

That’s because life in Nijmegen goes hand in hand with flood risk, making the effects of climate change impossible to ignore.

In 1995, the city experienced one of the worst flood threats in its recent history. The water levels became dangerously high in Nijmegen, and the river almost burst its banks – or dikes as they’re called in the Netherlands – which could have been devastating. As a precaution, 250,000 people in the region were temporarily evacuated from their homes. Faced with this constant fear of flooding, a nationwide water-management project, Room for the River, was initiated. At Nijmegen, the local council and residents were consulted on how best to protect the city, and a plan, which included creating a bypass river, was agreed.

For centuries, the Dutch have approached managing river overflows by building dikes to contain the water. Instead, this new project worked with the flow of the water by diverting it. To be effective, the dikes had to be moved and some of the river’s original floodplain recreated on the northern side of the river. This meant cutting through the village of Lent, where several homes, including Ribberink’s, were located.