Victim pressure, institutional inertia and climate change adaptation: The case of flood risk

Harries, Tim; Penning‐Rowsell, Edmund C.

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.09.002

Cited by 131 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The challenges to be overcome are more often discussed and explored in terms of inherent difficulties such as those associated with adopting systemic approaches (e.g., Miller et al 2012) or promoting stakeholder involvement (Reed 2008). While these may indeed be inherently difficult, perhaps because they entail greater complexity, challenges may also arise simply because they are new and differ from prior ways of working (Harries andPenning-Rowsell 2011, Rogers et al 2013). Therefore, it is useful to consider if explicitly framing and studying new interventions in terms of legacy effects could help to improve the understanding of environmental management and points of resistance to change.…”

Section: Rationale For Studying Legacy Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How does legacy create sticking points for environmental management? Insights from challenges to implementation of the ecosystem approach

Waylen¹,

Blackstock²,

Holstead³

2015

E&S

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ABSTRACT. There are many recommendations for environmental management practices to adopt more holistic or systems-based approaches and to strengthen stakeholder participation. However, management practices do not always match or achieve these ideals. We explore why theory may not be reflected by practice by exploring experiences of projects seeking to implement the ecosystem approach, a concept that entails participatory holistic management. A qualitative inductive approach was used to understand the processes, achievements, and challenges faced by 16 projects across the British Isles. Many projects made significant progress toward their goals, yet failed to achieve fully participatory holistic management. Many of the challenges that contributed to this failure can be explained in terms of the legacy effects of previous projects and the wider social-ecological system. These legacy effects do not necessarily imply a fixed path dependency or lock-in. We therefore call these effects sticking points. Drawing on the literature on institutional analysis and knowledge production, we distinguish three main types of sticking point: (1) institutional, arising from previous ways of working; (2) cognitive, arising from ways of framing and knowing; and (3) political, arising from pre-existing power relations. These sticking points may interact. For example, attempts to promote systems thinking and management may be impeded by a tendency for reductionist thinking, itself reinforced by the constraints on prioritization that arise from pre-existing statutory targets. These influences often arise from aspects of societal and institutional context beyond the control of any individual project. Stickiness is not necessarily all bad, but often acts to constrain the "opening up" away from previous approaches. Because the longterm success of natural resource management is argued to depend on more integrated, participatory, and holistic environmental management, we argue that these sticking points demand more explicit attention in both research and practice.

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Section: Rationale For Studying Legacy Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How does legacy create sticking points for environmental management? Insights from challenges to implementation of the ecosystem approach

Waylen¹,

Blackstock²,

Holstead³

2015

E&S

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…However, such a change is problematic. The shift can be hampered by strongly rooted institutional cul-tures tending to rely on engineered approaches (Harries and Penning-Rowsell, 2011).…”

Section: Shift and Diversification Of Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flood risk governance arrangements in Europe

Lewandowski

Choryński²,

Szwed

et al. 2015

Proc. IAHS

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Abstract. The STAR-FLOOD (Strengthening and Redesigning European Flood Risk Practices Towards Appropriate and Resilient Flood Risk Governance Arrangements) project, funded by the European Commission, investigates strategies for dealing with flood risk in six European countries: Belgium, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden and in 18 vulnerable urban regions in these countries. The project aims to describe, analyse, explain, and evaluate the main similarities and differences between the selected EU Member States in terms of development and performance of flood risk governance arrangements. It also discusses the scientific and societal importance of these similarities and differences.Attention is paid to identification and characterization of shifts in flood risk governance arrangements and in flood risk management strategies and to determination of triggering factors and restraining factors.An assessment of a change of resilience and appropriateness (legitimacy, effectiveness, efficiency) of flood risk governance arrangements in Poland is presented and comparison with other European countries is offered.

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“…At present, the government and insurance sector in England are renegotiating significant changes to flood insurance cover related to public management. A move towards risk-sensitive insurance would represent a significant development of the social contract, in terms of responsibility for adaptation between state, market and individuals but could also alter the profile of moral hazard (given that public consultation induces government emphasis on the more vulnerable that voice their concerns) 27,28 . Such developments may lead to unjust outcomes: underpinning these discussions are tensions extant in the English context, where millions already inhabit areas prone to flooding.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing social contracts in climate-change adaptation

et al. 2012

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Risks from extreme weather events are mediated through state, civil society and individual action 1,2 . We propose evolving social contracts as a primary mechanism by which adaptation to climate change proceeds. We use a natural experiment of policy and social contexts of the UK and Ireland affected by the same meteorological event and resultant flooding in November 2009. We analyse data from policy documents and from household surveys of 356 residents in western Ireland and northwest England. We find significant differences between perceptions of individual responsibility for protection across the jurisdictions and between perceptions of future risk from populations directly affected by flooding events. These explain differences in stated willingness to take individual adaptive actions when state support retrenches. We therefore show that expectations for state protection are critical in mediating impacts and promoting longer-term adaptation. We argue that making social contracts explicit may smooth pathways to effective and legitimate adaptation.It is clear that climate change will not be experienced as a smooth change in mean conditions, but as a series of extreme weather events, possibly leading to crises in policy and planning. These can offer opportunities for investment and legislation while there is public support and attention 3,4 . Understanding how events shape the direction of adaptation requires a theory of the process of change.Social contract theory has a long history in political philosophy. It explains how governments and responsibility evolve over time as emerging risks pose challenges to the established consensus concerning the role of the state. Social contract theory is contested: there are profound debates on the balance of power between civil society and the state. Recent applications suggest that adaptation and resilience could lead to renegotiation of social contracts because of the co-evolving nature of risks and multi-actor influences on change 5 .

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Victim pressure, institutional inertia and climate change adaptation: The case of flood risk

Cited by 131 publications

References 24 publications

How does legacy create sticking points for environmental management? Insights from challenges to implementation of the ecosystem approach

How does legacy create sticking points for environmental management? Insights from challenges to implementation of the ecosystem approach

Flood risk governance arrangements in Europe

Changing social contracts in climate-change adaptation

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