Making decisions after floods: a consistency check of drivers across multiple flood types

Abstract

Bourgeoning flood hazards inflict significant negative effects on the welfare of households, particularly in developing countries. Rapid growth in scholarship on impacts and flood coping strategies from developing countries is therefore a justified consequence. However, identifying the determinants of coping decisions across space and time has so far attracted little attention, in spite of their policy implications. Current efforts have been largely limited to Isolated, individual case study floods of little relevance for broad–based policy prescription. This study examines the drivers for coping decisions, using predominantly quantitative data from 106 direct flash and riverine flood victims from six flood-affected communities in Cameroon. The capital portfolios of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework were appropriated to categorize and identify key drivers for coping decisions. Descriptive analysis reveals that almost 70 percent of all flood victims predominantly adopted community–embedded, informal coping strategies, much in line with contemporary trends in the literature. Logistic regression analyses revealed that access to social, human, natural and physical capitals were consistent drivers of coping decisions, irrespective of flood type. Significant relationships were however observed only for flash floods (p=0.05). The results are strongly relevant, as the tested variables explained over 75 percent of the variance in the entire sample. The findings lead us to contend that policy is better informed by analyzing consistencies in drivers for flood coping decisions across space and time, especially if multiple case studies are modeled using similar methodologies. Further research is however necessary to ground this contention.