Floods

Dennis J. Parker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317854203
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

Floods occur in most parts of the world and range from being welcomed annual occurrences, to natural disasters which have countless physical and societal impacts.
Floods presents the most comprehensive collection to date of new research, providing a rich body of theory and experience and drawing together contributions from over fifty leading international researchers in the field. An extensive range of case-studies covering major floods and regions prone to flooding worldwide are included.

PART VI

REDUCING EXPOSURE AND VULNERABILITY THROUGH REGULATION AND OTHER SOCIAL PROCESSES

INTRODUCTION

D.J. Parker

Part VI is the last of the three Parts of this volume which principally examine strategies and methods for reducing flood hazards and disasters. The chapters in this Part address a variety of ways in which flood hazard and disaster exposure and vulnerability may be reduced. Part VI begins by emphasising the need to regulate the use of floodplain land with contrasting examples from the United States, Malaysia and Argentina. Reducing vulnerability is a theme of growing prominence as we proceed through to Chapter 31, in which the focus is upon ways of increasing the resilience of Bangladeshi floodplain inhabitants to floods. Discussion of the need to involve local people and the public in decisions about flood hazard reduction strategies, in order to ensure that these strategies are effective, was a theme in Part IV (Chapters 19 and 20). This theme is picked up again in Chapter 31 in the context of Bangladesh, and subsequently further developed in Chapters 32 and 33 in the context of other countries.

The United States affords one of the longest and most intensive experiences with land-use planning in floodplains in the world. Ray Burby (Chapter 28) describes and assesses this experience, including the different types of programmes and plans which have been developed, and concludes that in the United States context local government land-use planning has proven to be an effective means for reducing flood losses. However, he also concludes that landuse planning efforts have been undermined and weakened in a large variety of ways and that floodplain land-use regulation could be made much more effective given a number of actions by the federal government. In Chapter 29 Ngai Weng Chan switches our focus to Peninsular Malaysia, where land-use regulation and planning is not very well developed. Chan presents a picture of increasing flood risks in this part of Malaysia, and rapidly increasing exposure to flood hazards linked to recent rapid rates of industrialisation and urban growth. The east of the peninsula is much less urbanised and here, as well as within the urban centres of the west, the poorest Malaysians who are most vulnerable to floods reside. He examines traditional strategies for reducing flood exposure and vulnerability and finds that indigenous flood adaptations are widespread in the east, but in decline. Other policy responses, including Malaysia’s social and agricultural policies aimed at settlement relocation and poverty eradication, are examined for their effects on flood exposure and vulnerability.

Increasing flood risk and increasing exposure of property and people to flooding is also a characteristic of the Río de la Plata river basin in Argentina. Peter von Lany and his co-authors examine this large-scale problem in Chapter 30. Periods of low flood occurrence early in the twentieth century coincided with major expansion of agriculture, urban centres and industry in Argentina, but more recently the floods of 1982-83 and 1993 wreaked havoc in many of the developed areas which are flood prone. These floods stimulated a response from government, which was to invest in flood embankments, flood forecasting and warning systems, and highly selective flood-proofing, but the strategy is unlikely to be sustainable without other measures - notably land-use regulation and increased public awareness of flood risk. Von Lany et al. advocate an integrated approach to flood risk management: this approach integrates data and results from different forms of analysis (hydrological, physical, economic and social) and seeks to integrate structural and non-structural flood management measures to reduce risk, exposure and vulnerability. The basis of the strategy is a catchment management plan which would require international cooperation if it were to address the whole of the Río de la Plata basin.

Harun Rasid’s detailed study of vulnerability reduction in Bangladesh in Chapter 31 relies partly upon interview surveys with flood-prone people, and is based on the view that the preferences of floodplain occupants are and should be important inputs to the construction of effective flood strategies. Again evidence of indigenous flood adaptations is an outcome and Rasid observes that very little attention has been given to such adaptations in government initiatives to reduce flood disasters. However, Rasid found that compartmentalisation strategies (an important component of the Flood Action Plan for Bangladesh), in which flood levels are regulated inside flood embankments, are preferred by the majority of farmers interviewed to strategies seeking to contain floodwaters within embanked and improved channels. Some of the indigenous flood-proofing measures used were found to be compatible with this strategy, but the surveys did not examine local preferences relating to floodplain fisheries, drainage congestion and other environmental problems discussed by Thompson and Sultana (Chapter 20).

Maureen Fordham’s analysis of participatory planning for flood mitigation explores models and approaches drawn from the developed world (Chapter 32). She discusses how the flood engineer’s vision for flood management may conflict with the values of some local floodplain residents, and how masculine, top-down, expert/professional models of decision-making have been dominant. She argues for alternative approaches informed by qualitative methodologies and feminist theory, for example, which offer a more inclusive and democratic approach to making decisions about how best to mitigate floods. Like others, she views participation of local people in the design and development of flood mitigation strategies as an essential ingredient of effective mitigation. In the context of the countries examined she observes some signs of moves in this direction.

In most countries the media have an important role to play in informing the public about flood disasters, policy failures and successes, and policy choices. They contribute a means for greater public involvement in flood hazard reduction decisionmaking, as well as for communicating flood information and warnings. A good example of the latter role is given in Chapter 22, in which it was shown that radio stations in the Netherlands played an important role in the 1995 flood evacuation. In Chapter 33 Lee Wilkins, a journalism professional, examines the role of the media in informing the public (flood prone and not flood prone) about flood disasters and in contributing to a public which is well informed about the policy choices that flood hazards and disasters present. She does so by examining the media representation of two North American floods. She finds that the media symbolized these events, stereotyped the disasters, treated them as discrete, disconnected events and distorted reality in a variety of ways; yet the media also had great potential to inform and to encourage policy debate. Unfortunately, in these flood events the media tended to under-report good news such as the success of flood mitigation strategies (for which no symbol was found), focused upon the helplessness of flood victims and promulgated images of ‘too little, too late’. Excepting local coverage, policy changes that had flowed from the first flood were given minimal news coverage, and mitigation strategies attracted little attention. Thus a ‘national teachable moment’ about the necessity of flood mitigation was missed. Wilkins concludes that blaming journalists is insufficient and that, in the United States at least, the various institutions involved in flood mitigation need to work with journalists to find a visual symbol for success of flood mitigation.

A common theme in the earlier chapters of Part VI is the clash between economic growth and land-use regulation on floodplains - a theme touched on earlier by Smith (Chapter 15) in his discussion of floodplain management. Regulating floodplains can signal to some that economic development and growth is to be limited or halted, and there is often an unwillingness to pursue such strategies. There is also an unwillingness in some cases to forgo the benefits of floodplain locations, which in some circumstances can exceed or equal the costs in terms of flood damages. Balanced floodplain regulation can embrace these concerns and work towards maximising resilience, minimising risk and loss, and maximising the benefits of floodplain values without necessarily withdrawing from the use of floodplains, which have a range of beneficial locational and other attributes.

In Part VI it is noticeable that authors adopt different definitions and uses of the term ‘vulnerability’, a feature of the literature on hazard and disaster management (see, for example, the discussion of this concept in Chapter 1). For example, Rasid refers to the United Nations Disaster Relief Coordinator’s definition, which focuses upon degree of loss from a natural event of a given magnitude, which is quite different from a number of other definitions that emphasise the capacity of people to cope with a disaster (see Blaikie et al., 1994, in the reference list of Chapter 1). In Chapter 6 Brammer’s usage of vulnerability emphasises adaptive capacity, the vulnerability of buildings, settlements and people, and the vulnerability of particular locations, and this is similar to the way in which von Lany et al. use the term in Chapter 30. In Chapter 29 Chan is much closer to Blaikie et al. (1994) in his use of the concept of vulnerability, focusing for example on poverty and income as key indicators of vulnerability and access to resources. Diversity characterises the usage of ‘vulnerability’. Even so, a variety of methods of reducing vulnerability to floods are discussed within the earlier chapters in Part VI, demonstrating the scope for addressing flood hazards and disasters through vulnerability reduction policies.

Finally, as John Handmer points out in Chapter 47, participation of people in planning their future is an important component within the vision of sustainable development, which is increasingly the guiding framework for flood hazard and disaster management. In Part VI several authors (e.g. Rasid and Chan) indicate the local knowledge that floodplain occupan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Part VI Reducing Exposure and Vulnerability through Regulation and other Social Processes
• Part VII Examining the Physical Basis of Flooding
• Part VIII Enhancing the Predictability of Floods
• Part IX Lessons, Directions And Future Challenges
• Appendix
• Index