The common property issue in flood control through land use in France

Abstract

Through the example of French flood-control policy, this paper illustrates the general change taking place in the relation of societies and governments to risk. Former policies based on structural measures to reduce the alea were found excessively expensive, but liberal approaches based on insurance mechanisms were not suited to face extreme events. Better solutions depend on the re-appraisal of water as a common property and the design of corresponding institutions. In France, these could have been the agences de l'eau, which are now in charge of implementing the Water Framework Directive. But back in 1966, central government refused to involve them in flood control, keeping the latter in its own realm. After 1983, successive Governments preferred to develop cat'nat', a solidarity scheme based on taxes added on insurance premiums, and on local risk protection plans (PPR-i) constraining land use rights. This system's benefits and shortcomings are discussed, including the discrepancies between national post-disaster solidarity and local pre-disaster vulnerability reduction; it lastly shows recent evolutions towards catchment-based approaches in complex multi-level governance, in which the hydrographic district level, adopted to synthesise the flood risk management plans (FRMPs), is supplemented by catchment programmes on flood risks called PAPI. Implementing the FRMPs in France illustrates the need for economic incentives and common-pool institutions in multi-level governance.

Modeling the role of reservoirs versus floodplains on large-scale river hydrodynamics

“…Finally, flood control structural measures as reservoirs are very relevant for many situations, although non-structural measures are being increasingly preferable (Green et al 2000;Barraqué 2017), and dams with flood control only purpose are generally not built for large basins due to the required dam size to control very high flood volumes. Even then, there is an increasing need of improving our modeling capability of basin-scale effects associated with structural measures in the context of socio-hydrology (Di Baldassarre et al 2018).…”

A Novel Approach for the Integral Management of Water Extremes in Plain Areas

“…The SWAT model let us assess the differences in the surface runoff and soil humidity for each of the assayed scenarios, accounting for the role of green infrastructure associated with land use change [77], including the implantation of riparian forests [124] and the implementation of best management practices in agriculture [125,126]. This represents an approach with potential applications in this or other plain areas, being effective, economically sound and beneficial for the security and wellbeing of populations exposed to water extreme events.…”

“…Land use management plays a significant role in the propagation of water extremes ( [76,77]. Consequently, the agricultural practices based on non-structural methods [78] and the restoration of flood plains that allow for the existence of riparian forests are important green-infrastructure elements [79].…”

Identifying and quantifying landowner perspectives on integrated flood risk management

“…Moreover, opinions are mixed regarding the nature of the role of government. Structural measures that clearly provide public goods are consistently viewed as falling under the purview of state or federal government (Butler and Pidgeon, 2011;Bichard and Kazmierczak, 2012;Mees et al, 2013;Barraqué, 2014) while views regarding the role of government in land use planning and the regulation of development are more conflicting (Geaves and Penning-Rowsell, 2016).…”