Identifying barriers for nature-based solutions in flood risk management: An interdisciplinary overview using expert community approach

Pavel Raška; Nejc Bezak; Carla S S Ferreira; Zahra Kalantari; Kazimierz Banasik; Miriam Bertola; Mary Bourke; Artemi Cerdà; Peter Davids; Mariana Madruga de Brito; Rhys Evans; David C Finger; Rares Halbac-Cotoara-Zamfir; Mashor Housh; Artan Hysa; Jiří Jakubínský; Marijana Kapović Solomun; Maria Kaufmann; Saskia Keesstra; Emine Keles; Silvia Kohnová; Michele Pezzagno; Kristina Potočki; Samuel Rufat; Samaneh Seifollahi-Aghmiuni; Arthur Schindelegger; Mojca Šraj; Gintautas Stankunavicius; Jannes Stolte; Ružica Stričević; Jan Szolgay; Vesna Zupanc; Lenka Slavíková; Thomas Hartmann

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.114725

Identifying barriers for nature-based solutions in flood risk management: An interdisciplinary overview using expert community approach

J Environ Manage. 2022 May 15:310:114725. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.114725. Epub 2022 Feb 23.

Authors

Pavel Raška¹, Nejc Bezak², Carla S S Ferreira³, Zahra Kalantari⁴, Kazimierz Banasik⁵, Miriam Bertola⁶, Mary Bourke⁷, Artemi Cerdà⁸, Peter Davids⁹, Mariana Madruga de Brito¹⁰, Rhys Evans¹¹, David C Finger¹², Rares Halbac-Cotoara-Zamfir¹³, Mashor Housh¹⁴, Artan Hysa¹⁵, Jiří Jakubínský¹⁶, Marijana Kapović Solomun¹⁷, Maria Kaufmann¹⁸, Saskia Keesstra¹⁹, Emine Keles²⁰, Silvia Kohnová²¹, Michele Pezzagno²², Kristina Potočki²³, Samuel Rufat²⁴, Samaneh Seifollahi-Aghmiuni³, Arthur Schindelegger²⁵, Mojca Šraj², Gintautas Stankunavicius²⁶, Jannes Stolte²⁷, Ružica Stričević²⁸, Jan Szolgay²¹, Vesna Zupanc²⁹, Lenka Slavíková³⁰, Thomas Hartmann³¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Geography, Faculty of Science, J. E. Purkyně University, Ústí nad Labem, Czechia. Electronic address: pavel.raska@ujep.cz.
² Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
³ Department of Physical Geography and Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁴ Department of Physical Geography and Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden; Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁵ Institute of Environmental Engineering, Warsaw University of Life Sciences - SGGW, Warsaw, Poland; Institute of Meteorology and Water Management - NRI, Warsaw, Poland.
⁶ Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria.
⁷ Department of Geography, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
⁸ Department of Geography. University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
⁹ School of Spatial Planning, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany; Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
¹⁰ Department of Urban and Environmental Sociology, UFZ-Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany.
¹¹ HGUt - The University College for Green Development, Bryne, Norway.
¹² Department of Engineering, Reykjavik University, Reykjavik, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland; Energy Institute at the Johannes Kepler University, 4040, Linz, Linz, Austria.
¹³ Department of Overland Communication Ways, Foundation and Cadastral Survey, Polytechnic University of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania.
¹⁴ Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, University of Haifa, Israel.
¹⁵ Faculty of Architecture and Engineering, Epoka University, Tirana, Albania.
¹⁶ Department of Ecosystem Functional Analysis of the Landscape, Global Change Research Institute CAS, Brno, Czechia.
¹⁷ Faculty of Forestry, University of Banja Luka, Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
¹⁸ Institute for Management Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
¹⁹ Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands.
²⁰ Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, University of Trakya, Edirne, Turkey.
²¹ Department of Land and Water Resources Management, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia.
²² Research and Documentation Center for the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy.
²³ Department of Hydroscience and Engineering, University of Zagreb Faculty of Civil Engineering, Zagreb, Croatia.
²⁴ Department of Geography, CY Cergy Paris Université, Paris, France.
²⁵ Institute of Spatial Planning, TU Wien, Wien, Austria.
²⁶ Department of Hydrology and Climatology, Institute of Geosciences, Vilnius University, Lithuania.
²⁷ Environment and Natural Resources Division, Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, Ås, Norway.
²⁸ Faculty of Agriculture, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
²⁹ Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
³⁰ Institute for Economic and Environmental Policy, Faculty of Social and Economic Studies, J. E. Purkyně University, Ústí nad Labem, Czechia.
³¹ School of Spatial Planning, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany.

PMID: 35217447
DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.114725

Abstract

The major event that hit Europe in summer 2021 reminds society that floods are recurrent and among the costliest and deadliest natural hazards. The long-term flood risk management (FRM) efforts preferring sole technical measures to prevent and mitigate floods have shown to be not sufficiently effective and sensitive to the environment. Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) mark a recent paradigm shift of FRM towards solutions that use nature-derived features, processes and management options to improve water retention and mitigate floods. Yet, the empirical evidence on the effects of NBS across various settings remains fragmented and their implementation faces a series of institutional barriers. In this paper, we adopt a community expert perspective drawing upon LAND4FLOOD Natural flood retention on private land network (https://www.land4flood.eu) in order to identify a set of barriers and their cascading and compound interactions relevant to individual NBS. The experts identified a comprehensive set of 17 barriers affecting the implementation of 12 groups of NBS in both urban and rural settings in five European regional environmental domains (i.e., Boreal, Atlantic, Continental, Alpine-Carpathian, and Mediterranean). Based on the results, we define avenues for further research, connecting hydrology and soil science, on the one hand, and land use planning, social geography and economics, on the other. Our suggestions ultimately call for a transdisciplinary turn in the research of NBS in FRM.

Keywords: Europe; Flood risk management; Implementation barrier; Nature-based solution.

MeSH terms

Floods*
Geography
Hydrology*
Risk Management
Seasons