Justice and flood risk management: reflecting on different approaches to distribute and allocate flood risk management in Europe

Thomas Thaler,Thomas Hartmann

doi:10.1007/s11069-016-2305-1

Abstract

This paper compares the inherent notions of justice in four different approaches to flood risk management in Europe. As protection against flood risks becomes increasingly difficult, dilemmas of justice emerge: some benefits from flood protection measures whereas others loose. Decisions on whom to protect differentiate between upstream and downstream or left and right side of a river. This raises a central but barely discussed conflict: what (or rather who) should be protected against inundations? This question deals in essence with justice. Justice concerns questions over fairness in the allocation of resources, capital and wealth across different members of society. There are different and contradicting concepts of justice, which differ in interpretations of fair resource allocation and distributions. ‘What’s the right thing to protect’ is thus a question of concepts of justice. This contribution is not an attempt to answer this fundamental question, but it offers a debate on how different concepts of justice provide different answers. These answers will then be related to flood risk management approaches in England, the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria.

Highlights

This paper compares the inherent notions of justice in four different approaches to flood risk management in Europe
Several questions can arise in response to this: Should a commercial area be inundated more often than a residential area, or vice versa? What is the right level of protection for cultural heritage buildings or other public buildings? financing flood risk management brings with it the following issues: How should flood protection affectpayers who do not live in risk areas
How will policy instruments of adaptation and mitigation strategies affect future generations (Walker 2009; McKinnon 2009; Moellendorf 2009; Neal et al 2014). These issues of justice are barely discussed in the scholarly debate on flood risk management (Doorn 2015). Key questions surrounding those problems include the following: What justifies the protection of a particular piece of land? Whose land should be protected? Should flood risk management protect the upstream and sacrifice the downstream, or vice versa? Who—or rather what—should be protected best? These questions are recognised by recent policy, they are not expressed in such sharp terms

Summary

Introduction

This means that spatial planners, rather than considering one line of defence, must integrate various lines—this change moves the emphasis from security towards risk (Hartmann and Jupner 2014; Thaler 2014) This has crucial consequences for the allocation of land use since it balances flood risk on a much more differentiated level, raising questions such as whether a commercial area might be inundated more often than a residential area or what might be the right level of protection for cultural heritage (Hartmann and Jupner 2013). We compare four European countries (Austria, Germany, England and the Netherlands) in terms of their answers to these questions of flood risk management These four countries have been selected for this study because their approaches cover a sizeable variety of different concepts of justice

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