Anna Dubel

ABSTRACT This paper discusses four challenges for mainstreaming climate change into European flood and drought risk management policies within the water and agriculture sectors: the climate change impact challenge; the robust policy challenge; the EU policy maze challenge; and the implementation challenge. We illustrate with examples from the Warta River Basin in Poland. The challenge of reliably estimating the impact of climate change on flood and drought risk at the local and regional scales has led to the pursuit of robust policy solutions. Robust policy solutions, as we demonstrate by comparing reservoirs and small ponds, can be equally intractable given the lack of information on their costs, benefits, and co-benefits, particularly if climate change is taken into account. The mainstreaming challenge is further complicated by the myriad of EU policies targeting flood and drought risks. While the European Commission is working towards a coherent policy picture, we demonstrate contradictions regarding reservoir and other water retention policies. Finally, mainstreaming climate change in flood and drought policy is further challenged by the web of responsible institutions at local, regional, and national scales.

This paper addresses the question of how to create games that allow water managers and farmers to explore the consequences of their interactions in managing river-floodplain. The need for new approaches arises because conventional strategies appear incapable of coping with the rise of disordering events. Can alternative management regimes be developed that provide more effective coordination between administrative entities at different levels as well as between actors across the public/private and the ...