A. Wesselink et al. / Trends in flood risk management in deltasFlood-risk management (FRM) is shaped by context: a society's cultural background; physical possibilities and constraints; and the historical development of that society's economy, political system, education, etc. These provide different drivers for change, in interaction with more global developments. We compare historical and current FRM in six delta areas and their contexts: Rhine/Meuse/Scheldt (The Netherlands), Pearl River (China), Mekong (Vietnam), Ganges/ Brahmaputra/Meghna (Bangladesh) Zambezi/Limpopo (Mozambique), and Mississippi (USA). We show that in many countries the emphasis is shifting from 'hard' engineering, such as dikes, towards non-structural 'soft' measures, such as planning restrictions or early warning systems, while the 'hard' responses are softened in some by a 'building with nature' approach. However, this is by no means a universal development. One consistent feature of the application of 'hard' FRM technology to deltas is that it pushes them towards a technological 'lock-in' in which fewer and fewer 'soft' FRM alternatives are feasible due to increased flood risks. By contrast, 'soft' FRM is typically flexible, allowing a range of future options, including future hard elements if needed and appropriate. These experiences should lead to serious reflection on whether 'hard' FRM should be recommended when 'soft' FRM options are still open.
The southwest coastal delta of Bangladesh is not only geographically home to a dynamic interplay between land and water, and between fresh surface water and saline tides, but also to contentious debates on flood management policy. It has been argued that dealing with delta floods in this region boils down to adopting either open or closed approaches. This paper longitudinally structures the open-or-closed debate based on a number of emblematic water management projects in the region. Departing from a typical open wetland history, river and polder embankments increasingly started to constrain flood dynamics. Upheaval among rural populations in response to the negative impacts of hydraulic engineering plans and works coalesced in efforts to restore open approaches, synthesized in the Tidal River Management concept. Its resemblance to historic overflow irrigation is often used politically as a yardstick to challenge the dominant hydraulic engineering paradigm. This paper argues that dealing with floods in Bangladesh requires plans, policies and projects formulated against the historic background of complex interactions among social processes, environmental dynamics and technological interventions: a lesson to be incorporated in on-going policy-making processes and long-term delta management plans.
Recently the Vietnamese government has endorsed a long-term policy plan in which it is proposed to restore controlled seasonal flooding in the upper regions of the Vietnamese part of the Mekong delta. Restoring controlled flooding would contrast a period of several decades characterized by a dominant flood prevention approach to enable intensive rice production in the delta. This article investigates a series of long-term policy plans, which have been developed for the Mekong delta since the 1960s, on their take on flood control sensu flood prevention, or the opposite, controlled seasonal flooding. By doing so it is demonstrated how perspectives on flood management have gradually evolved and, in the specific case of suggesting controlled flooding, have been framed in various ways by various actors. Contemporary proposals for controlled seasonal flooding are supported by actors ranging from governmental institutes to environmental NGOs, and connect to ongoing debates about environmental challenges and sustainable development of the Mekong delta. We adopt a systems approach to analyze social, environmental and technological dynamics in the Mekong delta, and discuss whether the different interpretations of controlled flooding may contribute to the long-term sustainability of the delta.
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