The National and International Politics of Flood Risk Management

A major flood disaster reveals the state of society at its starkest, highlighting political divides and, potentially, calling into question the implicit social contract between state and society and solidarity between social groups. How disasters are handled can boost or ruin political reputations and careers, according to some analysts, with poorly handled disasters even believed to have triggered revolutions. Blame is highly salient in flood disasters, which are political from the start, as actors argue over the allocation of credit (political capital) and blame. Politics extend to what makes a disaster. After all, a disaster is only a disaster after a disaster declaration, releasing special powers and resources and fast-tracking interventions. Some destructive flood events never arrive at the status of “disaster,” despite negative impacts for specific populations. Who gets a disaster declaration can be a highly partisan decision, often informed by media attention and collective emotion. But zooming out to the disaster life cycle, political opportunity and clientelism often influence which disaster risk reduction measures are funded, who gets the best protection, and who gets saved and rehabilitated. Increasing attention paid to “disaster capitalism” points to political opportunism in disaster recovery, where the financial gain of powerful business actors may occur at the expense of vulnerable populations’ land or livelihood. Whether intentional or unintentional, political effects must be anticipated when planning disaster preparedness or response, whether structural or nonstructural flood risk management measures, which differentially affect actors across society. Internationally, disaster politics are visible in how state leaders are interested in under- or overrepresenting the state of disaster to attract or resist humanitarian intervention to protect their sovereignty. Disasters are also believed to open special windows of opportunity to change in relations between states or between state and centrifugal political forces such as liberation movements (“disaster diplomacy”). While transboundary coordination of flood warning and data exchange may bring adversarial states together, concern has mounted over governments’ use of an anticipatory politics of “climate disaster” to speed up the displacement of vulnerable/poor urban communities or to authorize controversial flood engineering in the interest of capital-intensive development.