Governing Flood and Climate Risks in the Netherlands and Hungary

Abstract

AbstractAs the world continues to experience an array of climate-driven disasters including floods, heat waves, and wildfires, how nations recover, rebuild, and build resilience to future extreme climatic events becomes even more critical for human lives and livelihoods. Within the European Union, extreme flood events are among the most damaging and costly climate-related disasters. As the global climate shifts due to greenhouse gas accumulation altering precipitation patterns, it remains unclear whether governance systems will be effective at managing climate-related disasters. In the European Union, both the Netherlands and Hungary have confronted and managed extreme flooding over centuries and will continue to face these potentially disastrous events. This cross-national comparison leverages differences in the governance of extreme flooding over centuries in these two nations to provide insights into drivers of and barriers to effective flood governance. The Netherlands, an original member of the European Union, has greater relative financial wealth and a recent history of more robust democratic practices compared to Hungary, a form Warsaw Pact nation that acceded to the European Union in 2004. Along with these differences, both nations face the challenge of integrating and implementing EU flood and climate-risk strategies and policies into their own governance systems. To help elucidate the drivers of and barriers to strengthening societal resilience to extreme climatic events, this chapter compares the extent of integration of flood governance across and within policy domains in each nation, as well as the role of civil society in flood and climate risk management.