Urban flooding and the resultant pollution: What French-speaking scientists make of it?

Abstract

Flood damage has increased worldwide in recent decades with a concomitant increased risk of flood-induced pollution. From the perspective of urban political ecology, we ask whether scientists acknowledge flood-induced pollution as a problem and if so how they address it. Using a mixed-methods approach, we analyse 30 semi-structured interviews with researchers in France and Quebec. Our results show that flood pollution can be framed not only in terms of its impact on the environment and our societies, but also as a social representation that varies with the spatial context. The diversity of flood-induced pollution, whether in terms of materiality, visibility, or causation, highlights the undefined contours of flood pollution for the scientific community. We identify obstacles to the emergence of this problem in the scientific arena explained by the structuring of this arena, the vagueness of the term pollution, regulation, and individual and collective approaches to resilience. We argue that these obstacles can be overcome by considering pollution as a social construct and viewing cities in a metabolic framework.