Canada is a country in the midst of a flood management policy transition that is shifting part of the flood damage burden from the state to homeowners. This transition-as well as the large financial losses resulting from flooding-have created a window of opportunity for Canada to implement strategies that increase property owners' capacity to avoid and absorb the financial and physical risks associated with flooding. This work presents foundational research into the extent to which Canadians' flood experience, perceptions of flood risks and socio-demographics shape their intentions and adoption of property level flood protection (PLFP). A bilingual, national survey was deployed in Spring 2016 and was completed by 2300 respondents across all 10 Canadian provinces. The survey was developed using assumptions in existing literature on flood risk behaviours and the determinants of flood risk management in similar jurisdictions. The paper argues that property owners are not willing to accept greater responsibility for flood risk as envisioned by recent policy changes. This finding is consistent with other OECD jurisdictions, where flood risk engagement strategies have been developed that could be replicated in Canada to encourage risk-sharing behaviour.

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One of the central tenets of the flood risk management (FRM) paradigm is that responsibility for flood mitigation and recovery must be shared with stakeholders other than governments, including property‐owners themselves. However, existing research suggests that this imperative is unlikely to be effective unless property‐owners demonstrate a sense of personal responsibility and are willing to undertake protective behaviours. In Canada, several recent policy changes have effectively transferred more responsibility to homeowners, but it is unclear whether Canadians are ready to accept this obligation. This article presents results from a national survey of Canadians living in high‐risk flood areas, which probed their attitudes concerning the division of responsibility for flood mitigation and recovery among governments, insurers and homeowners, as well as their willingness to adopt protective behaviours. The survey, which received 2,300 responses from all 10 provinces, indicates that Canadians are willing to accept some responsibility, but for most this perceived responsibility is insufficient to influence their decisions on mitigation and recovery. Governments in Canada could learn from jurisdictions that have addressed this disconnect through policies designed to improve awareness of FRM among property‐owners.

Although rarely studied, international accounting standards shape what information regarding a firm's environmental performance is communicated to international financial markets. This article builds on scholarship describing the influence of international accounting standards on private financial markets to show that nominally technical choices regarding how to recognize and measure firms' environmental impacts hold the potential to reduce these impacts. Obscure accounting debates within the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) mask important political choices about what a firm must disclose to investors about its environmental liabilities and risks. IASB decisions about how these appear on corporate balance sheets change the link between a firm's environmental performance and its economic value and, thereby, contribute to steering private financial markets toward rewarding sustainable behavior within the global economy. This analysis demonstrates the authority of the IASB as an overlooked source of global environmental governance. (c)© 2011 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.