The UK is once again hurt by floods and storms. If hilly Britain hadn't destroyed so many of its forests on the hills, it would have had more natural buffers that could retain the water (and also provide a buff to biodiversity!).
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...haos-across-uk
Humans can be as inventive as they want, and come up with as many expensive civic engineering projects as they want, building dikes and dams and other large constructions to keep nature at bay... but at the end of the day nothing is as efficient in protecting our homes from floods than forests and marshlands. People's negative attitude towards nature, one of fighting it, is ultimately causing a lot of these troubles.