Flood management in a changing climate

Abstract

In 2010-2011 Australia experienced its most expensive floods in history with costs to insurers and state and federal governments exceeding A$10 billion. Climate and population changes are likely to increase future flood threats and economists estimate that by 2050, even without factoring in climate change, Australia’s natural disaster damage bill could reach $33 billion per year. Flood management is thus a key area for improving adaptive capacity. While the causes of flooding are well-known, effective solutions have proved elusive and some flood management options may be maladaptive in the longer term. There were contradictions in flood management literature. Some sources categorized structural measures such as dykes and levees as adaptation measures. Others warned about their negative impacts. Meanwhile, innovative approaches used overseas appeared little known or used in Australia. Although structural measures were often criticized in adaptation literature, there was a lack of guidance about how to reduce reliance on them. Similarly, resilience researchers with a social-ecological systems perspective argued the need to identify policy and institutional interventions that would make it possible to move from undesirable to more desirable resilience domains. The challenge was therefore to determine how best to adapt to increasing flood risk, and how to facilitate the adoption of adaptive approaches. A key question was whether adaptive approaches used elsewhere were transferrable to Australia. Given the dominance of resilience theory in modern disaster management, a related research aim was to determine whether or not disaster resilience policy was likely to achieve adaptive outcomes. Literature review was the primary research method, supplemented with semi-structured interviews. Sources included recent flood reviews, academic literature, policy and legal documents. These were used to develop comparative case studies from China, The Netherlands, the United States and Australia. This was extended to cover global organizations for the resilience component of the work. Data analysis drew on literature relating to adaptation, resilience, comparative public policy, institutional theory and emergency management. Resilience interpretations were identified in a systematic way using a modified emergency management framework, complemented with narratives. Results revealed that resilience interpretations varied according to country, with Australia tending to be the least adaptive and the Netherlands the most. This reflects changes in attitudes towards structural mitigation. While support for structural mitigation remains strong in Australia, recent flood events in other countries have exposed its weaknesses. This has resulted in a shift to reduce levee dependency, accompanied by support for alternatives such as ecosystem based measures and development relocation. Such measures encounter significant barriers in Australia, making policy transfer problematic. Nevertheless, case studies revealed opportunities to improve program implementation, and investigation of path dependency associated with structural mitigation identified opportunities to alter feedbacks. Regarding application of resilience theory to disaster management, it was found that while resilience is a useful concept for researchers, there are problems when it is operationalised. A better focus for practitioners would be to negotiate long-term adaptation pathways.