Part 3. Practising participatory processes in flood control
3.2 Training the civil society to public participation in flood control
3.2.3 Training local authorities to public participation
The State has the “monopoly of legitimate violence (. . .) and sovereign authority” (Weber, in Coanus et al., 1998). In other words, the State “defines the general interest (. . .) supervising individual interests; (. . .) it is the point of view on points of view”. In other words, local authorities are responsible for the identification of what the community’s “general interest” is.
Public participation therefore is likely to provide authorities with a tool for the collection of the community members’ expectations regarding flood mitigation.
Still, public participation may not have been integrated in the “political culture” of all local authorities world-wide; these authorities may therefore need advice on why and how to design and implement participatory processes. For example, local decision-makers should be trained to design and implement local agreements on disaster-sound governance, ethics and participatory flood control. There may also be installed observatories in cities, at the level of a river basin, making possible real time monitoring of land use and runoff parameters (e.g.
tracking of land imperviousness rate and correlation with the urbanisation ratio). Local authorities should indeed be trained on how to implement sustainable, disaster-sound, land- use and urban planning in an integrated manner (e.g. by taking into account the interests of all stakeholders).
For example, the metropolitan region of Sao Paulo has since long been prone to flooding, and poor housing in flood and landslide prone areas expose the population to a high degree of risk. Due to inadequate land use and waste water treatment, floods are becoming more severe in the Tiete river basin, and urban water courses are highly polluted. Any hydraulic work done in the neighbouring rivers will be of little efficiency if flood control is not done in the contributing basins. A Decision Support System (DSS) for urban watershed management was developed recently, providing mitigation alternatives in the event of large flood events in the area. This DSS includes: a hydrologic and monitoring network, a historical database of static/dynamic data (internal and external sources), analytical tools (forecasting models, experts system, Geographic Information System), visualisation tools and reporting tools. The advantage of using this DSS is that non-structural controls including legal and institutional measures are simulated (e.g. new city code for lot occupation, storm drainage tax). Yet, implementing any such integrated approach requires voluminous databases, and it is necessary that authorities gather all these data in a systematic and continuous way.
Another example of integrated land use planning and comprehensive flood plain management is to be found in Japan. In the Tsurumi River basin, the suburban areas of Tokyo have been fully urbanised within a short period of about 25 years. The Tsurumi River thus has been converted into an integral part of the urban drainage system and comprehensive flood mitigation measures, including both structural and non-structural ones, had to be planned and executed, because the capacity of the receiving stream is much smaller than the surface runoff peak flow that would be generated without source control measures. These measures include:
installation of water retention facilities and preservation of natural retention functions, preservation of urbanisation restraint district and Urban Planning Act, encouragement of farming activities, constraint of landfill to maintain storage function, river improvements, provision of retarding basin, implementation of landslide water drainage plan, improvement
of warning and evacuation system, publication of maps showing areas flooded in the past, enlightenment of awareness of flood loss mitigation.
Recommendations to land use decision-makers and urban planners are numerous, and widely found in the literature. For example, infrastructures including water supply will have to keep abreast of development in order to avoid any potential constraints on the pace of development as well as on the quality of life (Ghooprasert, 1988), and water management plans (. . .) are suitable instruments for co-ordinating many competing demands on and uses of the water supply (Schilling, 1988). For Desbordes and Servat (1988), streets design becomes the first step of land planning in order to integrate storm drainage and urban runoff control.
Authorities should confront simultaneously land use plans with the consequences of it, in terms of aggravation of flood conditions. It is therefore very important to set up a real time feedback process of urbanisation trends, possibly including a Geographic Information System for the classification of land use (Richter and Schultz, 1988).
Schilling (1988) therefore proposes to develop a strategy in order to determine the best possible compromise existing between the competing types of use and functions [of water] in each river basin/zone (e.g. cost-benefit analysis). This approach, aiming at a synthesis of various or competing interests on water, would benefit from participatory processes, as these may enable water authorities to: 1) establish a stakeholders’ map of water users, 2) identify respective uses and needs of these users and establish priorities and 3) design and implement a concerted management scheme for water use. “The division of responsibility [in water management] among several agencies belonging to different government ministries will inhibit the application of a holistic approach. Alternative drainage concepts can be designed most effectively prior to the area development, and a master plan is a first step for a comprehensive water management plan” (Geiger, 1988). This is also true at local level, when authorities fail to take into account all the parameters, including long-term ones, of socio- economic development.
Conclusion
Successful public participation in flood-related issues should combine value judgement (from stakeholders) and technical information in a structured framework involving workable decision tasks. The objective of groups representing community members, NGOs or the civil society, should be then to provide better informed recommendations to local authorities.
Appointed or elected local decision-makers in charge of the design and monitoring of participatory processes should therefore seek that non-specialist participants to flood-related public debates are provided with reliable, quality information on issues related to flood mitigation and control.
Though the issue of assessing the quality of participatory processes in water management would deserve a specific attention in itself, four criteria may here be proposed in order to assess for the success of flood-related public participation initiatives:
a) The achievement of a consensus agreement,
The political objective of participatory processes is not to resolve a dispute (or seldom), but rather to provide decision-makers with an insight on the decision’s potential impact on affected communities, and to identify the expectations of these communities;
b) The way the steps of the process were addressed.
These ways should be understandable to all participants and involved stakeholders, and addressing their key factual questions. Decision quality requests both an appropriate decision framework, as well as appropriate information provided to the right people and groups. The selection of the decision framework therefore is the first critical step;
c) In the nature of the alternative recommended by the process.
This alternative should be highly effective in meeting most of all the objectives initially or progressively established for the decision.
d) There should be conducted an assessment of the participation campaign tangible and intangible “costs and benefits”. This assessment should be made public.
Information about floods is not lacking. On the contrary, it is abundant. Yet, there is often a communication gap between the environmental sciences and the social and human sciences. The International Hydrological Programme (IHP) aims to fill this gap by providing suggestions for integrated water management strategies, and this technical report intends to serve this objective. Regarding the mitigation and management of water-related disasters, IHP and the UNESCO Division of Water Sciences therefore represent a unique opportunity for the promotion of a convergence between water sciences on the one hand, and human, social and political science on the other. Assistance to Member States and local authorities in the design and implementation of comprehensive flood disaster prevention measures may for example involve methodological and operational guidance on the design and implementation of participatory processes in flood mitigation and control.
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Note : amidst the following list, some papers that we refer to were presented at various national and international scientific events (seminars, conferences). In that case, a figure between brackets refers to the related event. A list of these conferences is added to the bibliography.
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List of conferences related to the papers mentioned in the bibliography
(1)
International Conference on “Participatory processes in water management”, Budapest, 1999, UNESCO-IHP/IA2P/IWRA(2)
IDNDR Paris Conference on “Natural disaster mitigation and sustainable land-use planning”, Paris, 1999, IDNDR(3) 2nd Expert Group Meeting on “Public participation to water management and compliance monitoring”, Geneva, 6-7 September, 1999, United Nations - Economic Commission for Europe
(4)
Conference sur la prevention des risques lies aux inondations rapides et lentes, Paris, 29-30 Septembre 1999, SociCtC Hydrotechnique de France, Paris(5)
International Conference on “Flood prevention and protection”, Berlin, 7-8 October 1999, United Nations - Economic Commission for Europe(6)
International Workshop on “Non-structural Flood Control in Urban Areas”, Sao Paolo, 20-22 April 1998, UNESCO-IHP V(7)
International Workshop “Hydropolis - The role of water in urban planning”, 29 March - 2 April 1993, Wageningen and Emscher Region, UNESCO/IHP, Backhuys Publishers, Leiden, 1995(8)
1998 Annual Conference “Risk Analysis : opening the process”, Society for Risk Analysis - Europe, IPSN, 1 l-14 October 1998, Paris(9)
International Conference ‘Older people - a burden or a resource ? Their needs and contributions in humanitarian crises”, ECHO, The Finnish Government and the Finnish Red Cross, 16 September 1999, Helsinki, Finland(10) Urban Water 88, UNESCO-IHP International Symposium, 24-29 April 1988, Proceedings edited by the National IHP Committee, The Netherlands, 1988
(11) Symposium, “Water, the city and urban planning”, IHP, 10-l 1 April 1997, UNESCO, Paris