Flood Risk Governance for More Resilience—Reviewing the Special Issue’s Contribution to Existing Insights

Abstract

There is lively scholarly and societal debate on the need to diversify flood risk management strategies to contribute to more flood resilience. The latter requires dedicated governance strategies related to which relevant insights are currently emerging. However, more systematic theoretical and empirical insights on how to specify and implement governance strategies are still urgently needed. The Special Issue ‘Flood Risk Governance for More Resilience’ has brought together nine contributions by renowned flood risk governance scholars that together help to unpack lessons about these governance strategies. This Special Issue’s editorial introduces the debate on flood risk governance for more resilience and presents the key findings of the individual contributions to the Special Issue. We show that flood risk governance arrangements in specific regions in the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Bangladesh, France, and Mexico are gradually evolving. A common denominator is that more horizontal forms of governance are under development in which a more diverse array of public and private actors—including citizens, as well as different sectors, is becoming involved. Efforts are underway to establish connectivity between actors, levels, and sectors, both through regional and international exchanges. While lessons on how to do the former successfully are emerging, we notice that these should still be unpacked more fully. Moreover, there is still a need to establish a more open and inclusive societal debate on societal preferences regarding flood risk protection in which all actors with a stake in flood risk governance processes and outcomes can participate.

Advancing flood resilience: the nexus between flood risk management, green infrastructure, and resilience

“…There are three viewpoints on urban flood resilience: (a) Engineering resilience refers to a system's capacity to return to stability after being disturbed by floods, (b) Ecological resilience refers to the flexibility of a natural system to be robust and flip into another domain of stability, and (c) Socio-ecological resilience system highlights the role of the local community in creating opportunities for innovation and development in response to disturbances (Folke, 2006;Davoudi et al, 2012;Index, 2014;Vitale et al, 2020). Moreover, resilience as robust concept was identified in three main categories: (1) Engineering resilience, (2) Systems resilience, and (3) Complex adaptive systems resilience (Matczak and Hegger, 2020;McClymont et al, 2020). Based on this category, flood resilience is defined as capacity to resist, capacity to absorb and recover, and capacity to transform and adapt (Alexander et al, 2016b;Hegger et al, 2016;Zevenbergen, 2016).…”

Risk Social Contracts: Exploring Responsibilities Through the Lens of Citizens Affected by Flooding in Germany in 2021

“…Mainstream discourse on 'good' governance has encouraged the decentralisation of FRM roles and responsibilities to multiple public and private actors [1,4] and idealises a 'non-hierarchical form of decisionmaking' [18]. In contrast to earlier times when flooding was manged by a single entity [4], the decentralisation of FRG is now considered an important strategy of good governance due to the increased efficiency and democratic accountability it attempts to foster (i.e., decentralisation enhances knowledge sharing, cost reductions, the distribution of benefits, attuning to local contexts) [19,20].…”

“…The importance of citizen involvement in flood risk management and governance has been emphasised globally throughout the past decades, mirroring a broader localisation agenda within the resilience discourse. This shift away from a solely top-down management is supported by research [1], global policies (i.e., Sendai Framework (2015)), and at European level (EU Floods Directive 2007/60/EC), but also emerged as a lesson learnt from flooding events [2,3]. People or human-centred approaches to flood risk governance aim at complementing the topdown approach with a bottom-up initiative, moving towards decentralisation and sharing responsibilities [1,4].…”

Actionable Information in Flood Risk Communications and the Potential for New Web-Based Tools for Long-Term Planning for Individuals and Community

“…Hamilton et al (2018); Keech et al (2019) examined the role of public ad campaigns and informal communication, respectively, as a means of deterring the dangerous behavior of driving within floodwaters. Citizen engagement in implementing flood risk governance has proven to be successful and shows potential for future success in Europe (Wehn et al, 2015a;Wehn et al, 2015b;Mees et al, 2016;Mees et al, 2018) and elsewhere (Matczak and Hegger 2020), along with other "bottom-up" flood risk management initiatives (Paul et al, 2018;Seebauer et al, 2019).…”