Bavaria faces the greatest flood risk in Germany – urgent need for action!

Bavaria faces the greatest flood risk in Germany – urgent need for action!

The flood problem in Germany is making news again. Especially in Bavaria, where the German Environmental Aid (DUH) has presented alarming figures. Süddeutsche.de reports that the Bavarian regions have a uniquely high risk of significant flood damage nationwide. The study shows that there are an impressive 65,517 residential addresses potentially affected by flooding in Bavaria, while in Baden-Württemberg there are 54,593. A full 4.25 percent of Bavaria's land area is classified as a flood risk area.

The DUH also points out that although 6.81 percent of the area in North Rhine-Westphalia is at risk of flooding, around 28,000 affected residential addresses have been identified. There are further high risk values ​​on the table in Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt. This clearly highlights the urgency of appropriate flood prevention and sustainable protective measures.

Need for action in flood prevention

As the DUH states, the preparatory work in many federal states is not sufficient. mz.de adds that inadequate flood protection measures pose a serious threat to hundreds of thousands of people in the region. What is particularly required is a rethinking of flood prevention, particularly through nature-based solutions such as the renaturation of floodplains and rivers.

These measures could not only help distribute water better, but also slow runoff. The DUH has therefore created a flood risk level for the federal states, with Bavaria leading the way. A particularly serious problem is the fact that over 3,250 building permits have been issued in flood zones in the last five years.

Global impacts of climate change

This also provides another aspect Deutschlandfunk, which points to the global changes caused by climate change. Massive rainfall in Europe and most recently in the Spanish province of Valencia highlights the urgent need to address these challenges. In Bavaria, for example, it rained particularly heavily in mid-September 2024, which underlines the dangers of extreme weather events.

Climate change has led to increasing frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation since the 1950s. This could also lead to an increased number of once-in-a-century floods in the future, which statistically should occur once every hundred years. The likelihood of further extreme events is increasing, and early prevention is essential.

In summary, it can be said that although Bavaria has initiated measures, there is still a lot of work to be done to protect the population from the devastating consequences of floods. The DUH not only calls for better support for municipalities, but also for a rethink towards a nature-based protection approach.