Exploring the Inadequacy of Pertinent Capacities for Urban Flood Risk Management in the Developing Countries

Abstract

Of all the widespread natural hazards with large scale human, economic and environmental impacts, flooding surpasses. In the urban areas, the threats of this hazard are substantial and call for ever more attention, which, within the contexts of sustainable human and urban development, is increasingly an important problem in social science research. Urban flooding is a relatively new hazard phenomenon, which is progressively galvanising significant concerns globally due to the economic and political significance of cities. Flood risk management, based on the UNISDR idea of living with floods rather than fighting them, provides systematic techniques for tackling this hazard. However, the insufficiency or lack of the pertinent capacities, which are fundamental to best practices in flood risk management, undermine these techniques in many developing countries (DCs), such as Nigeria and Bangladesh. This study, through a desktop review of various published materials, focusing on urban flooding and management experiences in Lagos, Dhaka and Maputo, explores the lack of these capacities. Among other issues, the idea of resilient cities and communities as well as sustainable urban development will be realistic in the DCs only if adequate attention is given to capacity development.