Institutional drivers and constraints of floodplain restoration in Europe

Abstract

The task of restoring floodplains, as a means of improving flood protection or providing other benefits, poses multi-dimensional challenges to policy-makers and project managers alike. Involving essentially a reconfiguration of the interaction between a river and adjacent low-lying land, floodplain restoration affects a wide range of institutions designed to secure a variety of private and public goods associated with water and land use. A scheme to restore a floodplain requires the successful enrolment of these institutions in such a way as to create a result acceptable to the principal stakeholders. This is a highly complex process. This paper, based on EU-funded research on the policy contexts and selected pilot schemes of floodplain restoration in Germany, France and England and Wales, provides a critical appraisal of the institutional drivers and constraints of floodplain restoration. In particular, it explores how recent shifts in problem awareness and problem-solving in a number of relevant policy fields are creating windows of opportunity for more integrated approaches to restoring floodplains. At the same time it demonstrates the emergence of a new policy delivery gap emanating from the growing complexity of new generation floodplain restoration schemes.