National laws for enhancing flood resilience in the context of climate change: potential and shortcomings

Abstract

Flood risk is increasing across the world due to climate change and socioeconomic development, calling for a shift from traditional protection and post-event activism towards a forward-looking, risk-aware, and more holistic resilience approach. The national legal system of countries can play an important role in creating and encouraging such a shift. In this study, we explore the potentials and shortcomings of national laws in managing flood risk and increasing flood resilience in the context of climate change. We analyze 139 laws from 33 countries collected from the Climate Change Laws of the World and Disaster Law databases and underpin this with case studies to gain insights on the interplay between national laws and resilience processes. We find: (1) a shift in flood laws from focusing on flooding as a natural resource and water resource management issue towards a broader consideration of disaster risk management (DRM) and climate adaptation policy; (2) a significant lack of climate change recognition in laws regulating decisions and actions for future flood risks, especially in DRM; (3) a prevailing focus on response and recovery strategies and a lack of recognition of risk reduction strategies and proactive flood risk governance approaches; and (4) little recognition of natural capital (comparing to physical capital) and its role in increasing flood resilience. Key policy insights. Flood-related laws around the world lack consideration of future risks. Disaster risk management and climate change are often considered as separate issues in national laws, which can lead to gaps in institutional ownership, responsibilities, and allocated budgets.. Flood-related laws are mainly created after major events, most of which are focused on reactive strategies (i.e. response and recovery). Laws can facilitate the shift from post-event response to anticipatory actions by encouraging proactive flood risk management (FRM) activities (i.e. risk reduction).. Nature-based solutions often remain unrecognized in national laws due to the dominant focus on hard engineering measures. FRM should be treated as a holistic concept in laws: ensuring all the necessary human, social, physical, natural and financial systems are in place to support it.

Spatial and Temporal Distribution Characteristics of Rainstorm and Flood Disasters Around Tarim Basin

“…X j , X Maxj represents the average and maximum of the j-th disaster element respectively. The weight of the first disaster factor is expressed as: (2) After the calculation of formula (1), the weight coefficient, the average and the maximum value of five disaster factors can be noted in Table 1.…”

“…The term "rainstorm and flood disaster" refers to flood and waterlogging meteorological disasters that are easily affected by multiple factors, such as, rainfall intensity, topography, and underlying surface geology [1][2][3]. These types of disasters become some of the costliest natural disasters globally, especially in remote and impoverished areas; these often lead to massive life and property losses (the loss of 1.94 million lives and economic losses of US$ 2.4 trillion From 1970 to 2012) [4][5].…”

Evidence-informed policy for tackling adverse climate change effects on health: Linking regional and global assessments of science to catalyse action

“…Flooding. Flood risk is increasing around the world because of climate change and the interaction with socioeconomic development, including increased urbanisation and inadequate planning [28]. The various climate-induced causes include sea level rise, extreme weather events, excess precipitation, thawing permafrost, and melting glaciers, all of which are exacerbated by land-use changes, particularly urbanisation.…”

Issues of Natural Resources Law for Adopting Catchment-Based Measures for Flood Risk Management in Sweden

“…More concretely, the article focuses on legal issues affecting the integration of catchment-based measures for managing flood risk in three relevant national policy areas, namely energy (in the form of hydropower production), agriculture, and forestry. The article is oriented, not towards an exhaustive review of all the applicable national laws and regulations, but rather towards providing further insight on how the structure and design of legal frameworks can enable or hinder flood risk management at the catchment scale [23,29,49,50], which fits into the broader body of literature addressing the role of law in the governance of complex environmental problems [51][52][53].…”