Justice and flood risk management: reflecting on different approaches to distribute and allocate flood risk management in Europe

Thomas Thaler () and Thomas Hartmann
Additional contact information
Thomas Thaler: Middlesex University
Thomas Hartmann: Utrecht University

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2016, vol. 83, issue 1, No 7, 129-147

Abstract: Abstract This paper compares the inherent notions of justice in four different approaches to flood risk management in Europe. As protection against flood risks becomes increasingly difficult, dilemmas of justice emerge: some benefits from flood protection measures whereas others loose. Decisions on whom to protect differentiate between upstream and downstream or left and right side of a river. This raises a central but barely discussed conflict: what (or rather who) should be protected against inundations? This question deals in essence with justice. Justice concerns questions over fairness in the allocation of resources, capital and wealth across different members of society. There are different and contradicting concepts of justice, which differ in interpretations of fair resource allocation and distributions. ‘What’s the right thing to protect’ is thus a question of concepts of justice. This contribution is not an attempt to answer this fundamental question, but it offers a debate on how different concepts of justice provide different answers. These answers will then be related to flood risk management approaches in England, the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria.

Keywords: Flood risk management; Policy; Property rights; Justice; Allocation; Distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11069-016-2305-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:83:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1007_s11069-016-2305-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-016-2305-1

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().