Shifts in Flood Management Strategies in Poland (PAP014760)

Código

PAP014760

Autores

Adam Chorynski, Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz, Malgorzata Szwed

Tema

Urban Floods

Resumo

Poland has faced several destructive flood events in the last decades. These events differed by location, scale, related financial losses and number of fatalities. The large flood of 1997, mostly on the river Odra and its tributaries, brought huge damages. Large towns, like Wroc?aw, suffered significantly in absolute terms, while smaller towns, like K?odzko, were devastated even more, in relative terms. In 2010 Poland experienced another train of large flood events, where accumulated financial losses were around 4 billion Euro. Poland is a country that has been dynamically developing since 1989, when the systemic transition from a communist system with centrally-planned economy into a capitalist democracy with market economy started. In the transition period, institutions had to adjust their way of functioning to new political and market conditions. Local authorities have now considerable competences, but, in case of flood management there have been conflicts of jurisdiction that, among other effects related to large systemic and societal changes, resulted in poor efficiency of flood management system. A European Union 7th Framework Programme project STAR-FLOOD examines the problems of flood management in Europe. The project consortium consists of partners from six European countries, including Poland, that analyse selected cases within their own borders. The aim is to analyse strategies of flood management and to identify shifts in thinking of flood management strategies. In this paper authors, working within the STAR-FLOOD project, try to find the evolution of dominant flood management strategies in Pozna?, Wroc?aw and S?ubice, during flood events in the recent past. The main goal is to find if any changes have occurred in the field of flood management and whether there have appeared any new strategies, are there any shifts in discourses. In part, these changes seem to arise from Poland´s membership (since 2004) in the European Union and obeying to its advanced flood-related legislation (so called Floods Directive). Another issue is the problem of identification of the most important actors of flood management in Poland. The selection of case studies was influenced by the need to examine the problem in a range of scales. The case studies include a flood event in a large town (Wroc?aw on the Odra, with more than 700 thousand inhabitants), a well-protected large town with vulnerable suburbs (Pozna? on the Warta), and a small border town S?ubice on the Odra, with international cooperation. The data are collected through in-depth interviews and by analysis of documents, legal acts, as well as media releases.