Multilevel governance of coastal flood risk reduction: A public finance perspective

Abstract

Coastal flood risk reduction (CFRR) presents a significant public funding challenge, due to its high upfront costs and long-term benefits, and this challenge will increase with future sea-level rise. The funding challenge necessarily involves multiple levels of government, due to the regional nature of CFRR public goods involved. Yet there has been little research comparing such multilevel arrangements across countries, and in particular exploring the performance of public funding arrangements for providing coastal flood risk reduction. We address this gap, applying fiscal federalism to develop a multilevel governance analysis of public decision-making and fiscal authorities for CFRR in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Australia. For each country, we locate key decision-making and fiscal authorities in multilevel governance arrangements, and analyse their alignment with the benefits of CFRR measures (spillovers). We find diverse coastal flood risk governance arrangements ranging from highly centralised (NL), mixed arrangements, involving regional centralisation (Germany) or partial devolvement (UK), to full decentralisation (AUS). Further, we find that in accordance with fiscal federalism, multilevel coastal flood risk governance arrangements are generally reflective of the distribution of the benefits across different levels of government, with some exceptions (Germany and UK). Finally, exploring the outlook of current arrangements under sea-level rise, we find that major fiscal redistributions may be put under pressure by rising costs likely under SLR and future coastal development. This is particularly the case for those systems which operate under hazard-based, as opposed to risk-based, coastal protection policies. Further, we find that both fully and moderately decentralised arrangements may require greater central support for alternative measures, such as retreat, in light of growing financial burdens on local governments.

Uncertainty and Bias in Global to Regional Scale Assessments of Current and Future Coastal Flood Risk

“…But even when considering adaptation, uncertainties in future CFR are large, because a wide range of alternative coastal adaptation scenarios are plausible for several reasons. First, current adaptation practise is diverse, ranging from high flood hazard standards over cost‐benefit analysis to large adaptation deficits (Bisaro et al., 2020 ; McEvoy et al., 2021 ; Nicholls et al., 2019 ). Second, adaptation has been mostly reactive depending on the experience of an extreme sea‐level event (Rasmussen et al., 2021 ).…”

The diffusion of climate change adaptation policy

“…However, besides the aforementioned update of its adaptation strategy, the EU also adopted the new EU Climate Law in 2021, which contains an article on adaptation, which, for the first time, obliges the member states to produce adaptation plans 11 , 12 . While adaptation duties have only begun to emerge through the EU's legal framework, in some countries, national legislation obliges subnational jurisdictions to become active in adaptation (Bisaro, Bel, Hinkel, Kok, Stojanovic, & Ware, 2020b; Tompkins et al, 2010). For example, Keskitalo et al (2016) illustrate that Danish municipalities are, per national regulation, required to set up adaptation strategies, even if the national government cannot enforce their implementation, whereas Finnish municipalities are not obliged to develop such strategies.…”

“…Financial incentives for adaptation also emerge from national and subnational levels. In the Netherlands, national funds supported 34 projects to widen and deepen river beds and apply other, sustainable adaptation measures, such as in the city of Nijmegen (Bisaro, Bel, Hinkel, Kok, & Bouwer, 2020a; see also Bisaro, Bel, Hinkel, Kok, Stojanovic, & Ware, 2020b). In a Europe-wide analysis, the European Environment Agency (2014) highlighted that national financial support can drive local and regional adaptation whereas a lack of resources, including finance, was identified as one of the major barriers to adaptation (European Environment Agency, 2014, pp.…”

Global Climate Services: A Typology of Global Decisions Influenced by Climate Risk

“…For example, national laws may influence which objectives (e.g., efficiency, equality, loss avoidance, etc.) or which options are deemed appropriate in coastal protection decisions (Bisaro et al, 2020). For instance, in France, coastal planning regulations became stricter following Cyclone Xynthia, leading to more coastal hazard and SLR impact assessments to inform coastal land use planning and set-back zones (Le Cozannet et al, 2017).…”