The challenge of integrated flood risk governance: case studies in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada

ABSTRACT

This is an institutional study of the policy instruments that respond to flood for agricultural producers and their community. Two case studies in Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada were conducted through a review of secondary sources and semi-structured qualitative interviews to assess instruments based on the perceptions of agricultural producers and people involved in flood governance. Recent changes reducing federal government emergency training services for local responders have occurred at the same time that federal government disaster assistance payments to provinces and local communities have increased dramatically. Financial instruments are of key importance but increased attention should be paid to management instruments including participatory resilient emergency flood planning. Fragmentation in flood instruments and planning, together with a myopic time frame that does not include climate change considerations, leaves the study communities and agricultural producers vulnerable. Disparate communities not operating cohesively as districts leave one case study area vulnerable. These deficiencies are remediable by implementing appropriate missing instruments and comprehensive institutional flood planning.

KEYWORDS:

• Institutional analysis
• flood instruments
• agricultural and community flood response

• Subject classification codes: research article

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Policy instruments ‘are designed to cause people to do things, refrain from doing things, or continue doing things they would otherwise not do’ (Anderson 2010, p. 242).

2 This project was the Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Extremes in the Americas (VACEA) funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) NSERC, and IDRC (see www.parc.ca/vacea/index.php/water-governance). Some of the findings of this broader project are reported in Hurlbert (2018).

3 The interview guide can be found at www.parc.ca/VACEA.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by International Development Research Centre [Climate Change Adaptation].