ODI background note
By Peter Newborne
Debates on water policy tend to focus on scarcity of water, with comparatively little attention paid to analysis of policy frameworks for the management of floods.
This paper focuses on the principles that determine how governments plan and invest for the protection of people, and property, from floods. This is a fundamental issue, yet it is a neglected part of the already limited debate on flood management.
In development literature in general, some commentators take it as self-evident that governments have a responsibility to target public investment towards vulnerable and poor populations. Others are content to remark that economic and other policies will give rise to 'winners and losers'. Debate on flood management focuses on technical, economic and (to some extent) political aspects, without taking account of ethical dimensions. Although discussions of international perspectives, e.g. North-South responsibility for climate change, have included equity, the justice issues underlying the flood management policies of individual states are still neglected.