M.H.N. Bakker

Toward more resilient flood risk governance

Countries all over the world face increasing flood risks because of urbanization and the effects of climate change. In Europe, flooding is the most common of all natural disasters and accounts for the largest number of casualties and highest amount of economic damage. The current scientific debate on how urban agglomerations can be made more resilient to these flood risks includes a discussion on how a diversification, coordination, and alignment of flood risk management strategies (FRMSs), including flood risk prevention through proactive spatial planning, flood defense, flood risk mitigation, flood preparation, and flood recovery, can contribute to flood resilience. Although effective implementation of FRMSs can be considered a necessary precondition for resilience, efficient and legitimate flood risk governance can enhance this societal resilience to flooding. Governance and legal research has the potential to provide crucial insights into the debate on how to improve resilience. Yet the social sciences have only looked into this issue in a fragmented manner, often without a comparative scope. This special feature addresses this knowledge gap by focusing on the scope and workings of FRMSs, but also on cross-cutting topics such as uncertainties, distributional effects, solidarity, knowledge management, and citizen participation. The papers included in this feature are written by both policy analysts and legal scholars. The above-mentioned issues are thus approached via a multidisciplinary perspective. All papers convincingly show that one-size-fits-all solutions for appropriate and resilient flood risk governance arrangements do not exist. Governance arrangements should be tailored to the existing physical, socio-cultural, and institutional context. This requires an open and transparent debate between scientists and practitioners on the normative starting point of flood risk governance, a clear division of responsibilities, the establishment of connectivity between actors, levels, and sectors through bridging mechanisms, and adequate knowledge infrastructures, both nationally and internationally

Recurrent Governance Challenges in the Implementation and Alignment of Flood Risk Management Strategies: a Review

In Europe increasing flood risks challenge societies to diversify their Flood Risk Management Strategies (FRMSs). Such a diversification implies that actors not only focus on flood defence, but also and simultaneously on flood risk prevention, mitigation, preparation and recovery. There is much literature on the implementation of specific strategies and measures as well as on flood risk governance more generally. What is lacking, though, is a clear overview of the complex set of governance challenges which may result from a diversification and alignment of FRM strategies. This paper aims to address this knowledge gap. It elaborates on potential processes and mechanisms for coordinating the activities and capacities of actors that are involved on different levels and in different sectors of flood risk governance, both concerning the implementation of individual strategies and the coordination of the overall set of strategies. It identifies eight overall coordination mechanisms that have proven to be useful in this respect.

Flood risk mitigation in Europe: how far away are we from the aspired forms of adaptive governance?

Flood mitigation is a strategy that is growing in importance across Europe. This growth corresponds with an increasing emphasis on the need to learn to live with floods and make space for water. Flood mitigation measures aim at reducing the likelihood and magnitude of flooding and complement flood defenses. They are being put in place through the implementation of actions that accommodate (rather than resist) water, such as natural flood management or adapted housing. The strategy has gained momentum over the past 20 years in an effort to improve the sustainability of flood risk management (FRM) and facilitate the diversification of FRM in the pursuit of societal resilience to flooding. Simultaneously, it is increasingly argued that adaptive forms of governance are best placed to address the uncertainty and complexity associated with social-ecological systems responding to environmental challenges, such as flooding. However, there have been few attempts to examine the extent to which current flood risk governance, and flood mitigation specifically, reflect these aspired forms of adaptive governance. Drawing from EU research into flood risk governance, conducted within the STAR-FLOOD project, we examine the governance of flood mitigation in six European countries: Belgium, England, France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden. Using in-depth policy and legal analysis, as well as interviews with key actors, the governance and implementation of flood mitigation in these countries is evaluated from the normative viewpoint of whether, and to what extent, it can be characterized as adaptive governance. We identify five criteria of adaptive governance based on a comprehensive literature review and apply these to each country to determine the “distance” between current governance arrangements and adaptive governance. In conclusion, the flood mitigation strategy provides various opportunities for actors to further pursue forms of adaptive governance. The extent to which the mitigation strategy is capable of doing so varies across countries, however, and its role in stimulating adaptive governance was found to be strongest in Belgium and England.

Enhancing Connectivity Between Strategies by Bridging Actors, Levels and Sectors

The adoption of a broader portfolio of flood risk management strategies inevitably leads to involvement of more different public and private actors; different governmental levels and different sectors. This may lead to fragmentation. To remedy this, bridging processes and mechanisms are needed. The spatial planning and insurance sector are vital players in this respect. Furthermore, businesses, citizens and NGOs need to be involved further through comprehensive multi-actor co-production, since not all resources and capacities needed for resilient flood risk governance are available within governmental institutions. Besides that, in Europe participation in decision making is considered of crucial importance and strongly established through the Aarhus convention. Decentralisation may help in bridging different levels of government to ensure a good combination of top-down and bottom-up governance, however provided that the shifting of financial and executive tasks is accompanied by a shifting of formal powers and resources. Open, broad (political and societal) debate about the division of responsibilities between public and private actors is needed, leading to more clearly defined roles for governments/businesses/NGOs/citizens.

Implications for Risk Governance Research and Practice

The STAR-FLOOD project (2012–2016) was an integrated project funded by the European Commission under the FP7 programme. It carried out combined social scientific and legal studies, whereby flood risk governance in six European countries was analysed, explained and evaluated. This chapter first reflects on strengths and weaknesses of the chosen research approach. Especially the intensive interdisciplinary interaction as well as intensive interaction with stakeholders has contributed to a significant advancement of the state of the art of flood risk governance literature and practice. Such an approach that goes beyond ‘working in silos’ is recommendable for future European projects. In so doing, the project has led to governance design principles pertaining both to the process and outcome of flood risk governance. The chapter reviews each of them in turn, thus specifying how following these principles may lead to the best possible achievements in terms of resilience, efficiency and legitimacy. A dominant message to be derived from the findings is that there are no panaceas when it comes to improving flood resilience. The appropriateness of the followed approaches in a particular geographical, social, administrative and cultural context is of pivotal importance.

Researching Flood Risk Governance in Europe

Flood risks in European countries are increasing due to urbanisation and the consequences of climate change. To address these increasing risks, several countries are attempting to diversify their portfolio of flood risk management strategies. Besides improvement of flood defences, the strategies of pro-active spatial planning; flood mitigation, flood preparation and recovery are prominently on the agenda. Governance and legal scholars have engaged with flood risk management, but only in a fragmented manner and without adopting a comparative approach, leaving crucial questions on how to govern towards resilient, efficient and legitimate flood risk governance underexposed. The book of which this chapter forms the introduction provides an overview of the main results of the EU FP7 project STAR-FLOOD (2012–2016). This was a multi-disciplinary project involving governance and legal scholars. It made a comparative analysis and evaluation of flood risk governance arrangements in Belgium, England, France, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden in order to derive design principles for appropriate and resilient flood risk governance. The chapter sets the scene by substantiating the relevance of adopting a governance and legal perspective on FRM. It furthermore explains the main features of STAR-FLOOD’s research approach in some detail, highlights connections with relevant existing literature and provides a reading guide to the forthcoming chapters.

Evaluations of Flood Risk Governance in Terms of Resilience, Efficiency and Legitimacy

Diversification of flood risk management strategies can be seen as a necessary but not sufficient precondition for enhancing societal resilience to floods. This chapter identifies three relevant capacities of resilience: the capacity to resist flooding, the capacity to absorb/recover when a flood event occurs and the capacity to adapt to future risks and transform deliberately. These are to be seen as different views on desired outcomes for flood risk governance and have been found to be to some extent mutually exclusive. Resilience is closely linked to the notion of appropriateness: desired outcomes in terms of resilience should be considered in the light of physical circumstances and existing institutional and social contexts. The presence of links between strategies is crucial for countries’ achievements in all three capacities. The chapter goes on to review two other evaluation criteria for flood risk governance: efficiency and legitimacy. Efforts to improve resource efficiency by increased application of (societal) Cost Benefit Analyses are underway in different countries, albeit to a different extent. These CBAs were found to contribute to resource efficiency, but in some countries were perceived as rather technocratic. In terms of legitimacy, the researched countries are doing well on access to information and transparency; procedural justice and accountability. The most potential for improvement lies with the criteria of social equity; public participation and acceptability.

Rules and Resources for Flood Risk Governance

Diversification of Flood Risk Management Strategies is accompanied by a diversification in rules and regulations. However, in some cases a lack of rules can be witnessed, especially in cases in which certain strategies have not yet been implemented to a significant extent. This chapter reviews several of these rules, including the Floods Directive (Directive 2007/60/EC). While we found evidence that supports its general scope, we also discuss points at which the Directive or its implementation can still be improved, most notably by adding more substantive requirements and increasing its enforceability. Regarding resources (finance, knowledge, skills, ICT tools, public support) we found that their availability differs significantly between countries. This may be problematic since the lack of resources was shown to be an important reason for underinvestment in and underdevelopment of FRM strategies. An important policy issue for the coming years will be to have political debate and make political choices in order to combine the (perceived and sometimes already legally settled) ‘right to be protected’ of citizens by public authorities with the decreasing resource base many public authorities are facing. Resources may also play a key role in bridging, for instance by ensuring that actors involved have the necessary skills, and that private actors receive sufficient payment to increase their willingness to let their land function as flood storage.

Diversification of Flood Risk Management Strategies – Necessity and Importance

Diversification of Flood Risk Management Strategies (FRMSs) is debated both in research and practice. A comparative analysis and evaluation of diversification of FRMSs in Belgium, England, France, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden showed large inter-country differences in their approaches to diversification. In the Netherlands, Poland, France and Belgium, we see a desire to create a back-up layer of contingency. England has been diversified for 65 years, while Sweden is currently diversifying due to climate change concerns. In most countries the practical on the ground implementation of diversified strategies is lagging behind intentions as laid down in discussions and policy plans. Main drivers for diversification are: policy entrepreneurs; bottom-up initiatives by local stakeholders; a broader discursive shift towards sustainability and resilience; the presence of enforceable rules and regulations; the availability of financial resources; technical improvements; broader shifts ‘from government to governance’; and Europeanisation. Main barriers for diversification are: a lack of resources and path dependency. Floods as trigger events have been found to contribute both to stability and change, but under different circumstances. To enhance societal resilience to flooding, diversification of flood risk management strategies (FRMSs) is both necessary and important. However, each strategy must be effective in its own right and needs sufficient investment to make its implementation sensible.

Future bottlenecks in international river basins: where transboundary institutions, population growth and hydrological variability intersect

ABSTRACT Using global data, this article examines the nexus of transboundary flood events and future social vulnerability. Which international river basins are forecast to experience an increase in both hydrological variability and population in the future, but currently lack institutional provisions to deal with these shared events? Concentrations of elevated risk are found in several basins in Central Asia, Central America and Central Africa. The article ends by highlighting transboundary basins that merit further investigation and possibly additional institution building to reduce urban flood risk.