Floods in urban areas

1.1 SETTING THE SCENE

Floods are commonly defined as an overwhelming flow of water onto land that is normally dry and which under certain circumstances can cause unprecedented losses and devastation. The argument put forward in this book is that these losses are often the result of a wide range of interactions between different actors and processes which can be natural, human and technology related. Therefore, flood-related problems should be viewed from as many different perspectives as possible before a way of dealing with them is selected. The purpose of the discussion in this opening chapter is to illustrate the complexity of flood-related problems and to suggest the way forward.

According to the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT), over the last seventy years, the incidence of floods has shown the fastest rate of increase relative to other types of disasters (see also Guha-Sapir et al. 2012), Figure 1.1. Devastation due to these events occurs almost daily. Even though our technological capabilities for dealing with floods have advanced rapidly over the same period, and while global economic growth per capita has doubled, flood events have become ever more disastrous (see for example, Pelling, 2011). Does this mean that our technological developments have advanced independently from the social and wider ecological needs? This paradoxical situation can be viewed as a result of our narrow and fragmented perception of reality which has proved to be inadequate for dealing with some of the greatest problems of our time. As pointed out some time ago by Burton and Kates (1964), the perception of floods and other natural disasters as 'those elements of the physical environment harmful to man and caused by forces extraneous to him' has led to the preference for physical rather than social treatment of floods, with urban societies being allowed to live under the shadow of increasing risk. This view of floods has brought not only ineffective solutions, but also conditions for ever increasing risks and greater disasters. This is largely due to the fragmented and piecemeal way of thinking which has been characteristic of our academic disciplines and government agencies, and which is predominantly based on a disciplinary treatment of floods supported by quantification, ordering, numbering, counting and measuring (Heidegger, 1963; Abbott, 1991; Vojinovic & Abbott, 2012). We shall also recall the earlier work of Ackoff and Emery (1972) who noted:

Nature does not come to us in disciplinary form. Phenomena are not physical, chemical, biological and so on. The disciplines are the ways we study phenomena; they emerge from points of view, not from what is viewed. Hence the disciplinary nature of science is a filing system of knowledge. Its organisation is not to be confused with the organisation of nature itself. (p. 4)

With growing evidence to date, it has become obvious that most flood-related disasters, although commonly referred to as natural disasters, are not in fact the results of nature-related processes alone. They are due to an ever increasing extent directly attributable to various social, economic, historical, political and even cultural causes. As noted in Vojinovic and Abbott (2012), in some cases, gender, race and ethnicity issues represent yet another dimension of complexity which in certain conditions may amplify disastrous outcomes. Observations also show that the level of knowledge and understanding of flood risk in a given area is directly related to people's decisions to either adjust their lives to such a risk or simply to ignore it. However, most of the time, the deepest root causes lie in the dominant processes and values of the political economy that increasingly give rise to profound social and environmental injustices (see also Pelling, 2011). It is often the urban poor who take a larger toll.

The urban poor are often located at sites vulnerable to floods and landslides, earthquakes and fires, infrastructure is weak or lacking, and housing is substandard and prone to collapse, Figure 1.2. In such situations making the right choices so as to achieve some measure of 'distributive justice' in the redistribution of risks and allocation of flood protection funds within a society has been a difficult, and in many cases, unachievable, task. Thus, planning for more effective flood resilience requires not only sound engineering knowledge but also a much deeper understanding of social, cultural and ethical aspects, while any ignorance, either intentional or unintentional, of such aspects can only lead to ever increasing risks and greater disasters.

Climate change (or climate extremes), population growth and urbanisation processes are certainly bringing some of the greatest challenges of our time which in turn reinvigorate the significance of adaptation, resilience and transformation (i.e., transcendence). It has been acknowledged that urban areas cause 70% of humanity's ecological footprint as they represent places where most of the resources are consumed (Global Footprint Network, 2012). The way that urbanisation patterns emerge and their impacts on land and ecosystems are shaped by interdependencies and interrelations between different drivers and actors, and their corresponding impacts, and responses to these dynamics. Unfortunately, dealing with adaptation and resilience is too often seen as an act of technological advancement, and the evidence to date suggests that such questions are not only technological but also significantly social, economic, organisational and political (see White et al. 2001; IRDR, 2009; Pelling, 2011; Vojinovic & Abbott, 2012). Discussing the significance of adaptation for sustainable development, Adger et al. (2009) highlights that climate change adaptation decisions have justice consequences across as well as within generations. Pelling (2011) argues that adaptation requires questioning power relations in the society as power held by an actor in a social system plays a great role in shaping an actor's response towards change. Following Bruno Latour (2005) we note that when entities connect and preserve their heterogeneity, they change 'what they can do' as an assemblage, they change the 'script', implying that decision making processes fundamentally change when modes of representation are altered.

What follows from all of the above is that the search and...