the-BA : Making space for water

By Mary McGee Wood

Flooding is the perfect interdisciplinary science. Its geographical and geological aspects are crudely obvious, but we need environmental science to understand its ecological impact, and the social sciences to understand and support affected human communities.

As the scientific establishment has grown to understand the importance, first of "public understanding" and, more recently, of "public engagement with science", flood management is an issue which shows how dialogue can be used to greatest advantage - not just handing down official wisdom to local communities, but drawing on their local knowledge, and listening to their perceptions and concerns.

The shift in policy from "flood defences" to "flood management" also exemplifies the wider shift, called for by BA President Frances Cairncross in her Address to the Festival, from a focus on "mitigation" of climate change to "adaptation". The UK government’s Foresight report on "Future Flooding" was published in spring 2004, and DEFRA’s consultation report, "Making Space for Water", in the autumn of that year, showing that the British political system is concerned about flooding, even at the highest levels.

Perhaps flooding has attracted attention as a candidate for the adaptation approach because it is so obvious. We can see that flooding and coastal erosion are happening, and that trying to stop them is ineffective. The Victorians, when the railways first made possible the great British phenomenon of the popular seaside holiday, extended their confident civil engineering to the construction of sea-walls. But we now recognise that is not viable in the long term, or so says Professor Julian Orford. Water is stronger than our defences, and we had better figure out the best way to live with it.

The social, and social science, aspects of flood management were explored in a talk by Sarah Damery. Her analysis of risk was illuminating: risk objectively defined, risk as a social construction (including the social nature of "at-risk" populations, and highlighting the importance of dialogue), and risk as a calculation involving both probabilities and consequences.

Building on floodplains increases risk by increasing the effects of a flood, not its likelihood of occurring.

Steve Wheatley from the Environment Agency reinforced the message of management, "the need to plan for retreat now". His talk was followed by an excursion allowing the audience to walk the local shores and river-banks and oberve for themselves, in benign calm and warm autumn sun.

Foresight report on "Future Flooding"

DEFRA report on "Making Space for Water"