Elsevier

Environmental Science & Policy

Volume 64, October 2016, Pages 38-47
Environmental Science & Policy

A framework for evaluating flood risk governance

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2016.06.004Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Flood risk governance is required to support societal resilience, resource efficiency and legitimacy.

  • A coherent evaluation framework is proposed and tested through empirical research conducted in England.

  • Evaluation of flood defence and mitigation governance in England reveals considerable strengths in the current approach.

  • Also identified are entry points for strengthening governance in the pursuit of resilience, efficiency and legitimacy.

  • The framework provides a necessary first step in assessing, monitoring and strengthening flood risk governance.

Abstract

Calls to strengthen flood risk governance are echoed across Europe amidst a growing consensus that floods will increase in the future. Accompanying the pursuit of societal resilience, other normative agendas relating legitimacy (e.g. accountability and public participation), and resource efficiency, have become attached to discussions concerning flood risk governance. Whilst these represent goals against which ‘success’ is socially and politically judged, lacking from the literature is a coherent framework to operationalise these concepts and evaluate the degree to which these are achieved. Drawing from cross-disciplinary and cross-country research conducted within the EU project STAR-FLOOD, this paper presents a framework for evaluating the extent to which flood risk governance arrangements support societal resilience, and demonstrate efficiency and legitimacy. Through empirical research in England, this paper critically reflects on the value of this approach in terms of identifying entry points to strengthen governance in the pursuit of these goals.

Introduction

Amidst a growing consensus that floods will increase in the future (Feyen et al., 2012), flood risk governance, through which Flood Risk Management (FRM) is delivered, has emerged as a focal point of policy and research attention. In the pursuit of societal resilience, critical questions arise about how current governance arrangements support or alternatively constrain this goal. Different schools of thought have posited that resilience can be measured in terms of the capacity to resist, absorb, recover and/or adapt to stresses and so-called ‘shock’ events (e.g. Folke, 2006, Djalante et al., 2011). These different standpoints naturally have implications for how resilience is measured and for identifying necessary characteristics of flood risk governance.

Accompanying the pursuit of societal resilience, efficiency discourses have arguably grown in momentum following the global financial crisis in 2008 and an increased need to demonstrate the best value for public monies (OECD, 2015). However, the redundancy and diversity of FRM measures requested for resilience (Hegger et al., 2014), are at odds with this endeavour. In addition to resource efficiency, other recurring standards of flood risk governance (and ‘good’ governance more broadly), include transparency, inclusive and participatory decision-making, accountability, procedural justice, social equity and societal acceptance (Termeer et al., 2011, OECD, 2015, Thaler and Hartmann, 2016). These criteria can be assimilated into the umbrella notion of legitimacy.

Drawing from public administration and legal research performed within the EU project “STAR-FLOOD”, this paper critically reviews the concepts of societal resilience, efficiency and legitimacy, and seeming conflicts between these. Addressing a neglected gap in the literature, this paper presents a framework for evaluating flood risk governance in terms of these desired goals. Using English flood risk governance as an empirical example, this paper highlights the value of this approach as a tool for identifying entry points to strengthen governance in the pursuit of these goals.

Section snippets

Conceptualising flood risk governance

Although governance is a disputed concept, there is a consensus that it captures the dynamics of governing in the pursuit of a collective goal (Lange et al., 2013). Theoretical debates are formed around the different modes of governance, connected to the configuration of actors (public authorities, private and civil society), distribution of power and institutional structures (Driessen et al., 2012). For some, governance marks a transition from traditional State-led, ‘top-down’ decision-making,

A framework for evaluating flood risk governance

Evaluation can be approached as a series of ‘building blocks’ through which insights obtained from smaller units of analysis inform an understanding of increasingly more complex objects (i.e. the overarching FRGA). Thus the proposed framework is designed to be flexible and can be tailored accordingly.

Arguably, the biggest challenge is the selection of appropriate evaluation criteria. Although, a number of recurring themes are evident within the literature, relating to legitimacy, transparency,

Methods for application

To validate this evaluation framework, empirical research was conducted in England. A range of data were consulted, including national policy (e.g. Defra/EA, 2011; Defra, 2012a), legislation, spending figures (e.g. Defra, 2014a), as well as independent and public inquiries (e.g. Pitt, 2008; Efra committee, 2015). This was accompanied by over sixty semi-structured interviews with past and current flood risk professionals to capture a range of perspectives, from policy to practice, situated at

Evaluating fluvial and coastal flood defence and mitigation governance in England

To demonstrate the application of the evaluation framework, this section examines fluvial and coastal flood defence and mitigation governance in England (for a more detailed account the reader is referred to Alexander et al., 2016).

Conclusions

This paper presents a coherent framework for evaluating flood risk governance in the pursuit of societal resilience, efficiency and legitimacy. Through empirical research conducted in England, the applicability and value of this framework as a tool for identifying strengths and weaknesses of current governance arrangements, is demonstrated. This research not only addresses a neglected gap in the study of flood risk governance, but provides an evaluative approach that can be applied to different

Acknowledgement

This paper has been written in the framework of the EU FP7 project STAR-FLOOD. This research has received funding from the European Commission under grant agreement no. 308364. We would like to thank the reviewers and our STAR-FLOOD colleagues for their valuable contributions to this paper.

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