CO-PRODUCING FLOOD RISK MANAGEMENT THROUGH CITIZEN INVOLVEMENT: ARE WE READY IN LAGOS?

 

It is no longer news that the coming months and the next raining cycle will be one of the most challenging ones for Nigerians especially Lagosians if the information from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) is anything to go by. According to NEMA, “Flood prediction by the Nigerian Hydrological Agency (NHSA) had indicated that 102 council areas in 28 states are at high risk of flood, 275 council areas in the 36 states including the FCT are at moderate risk while the remaining 397 councils falls within the low probable risk areas.”

Flooding is synonymous with Lagos not because the city managers cannot manage the flooding situation but because we are one of the cities that are presently experiencing the effects of climate change, as the world coastal cities are going under. Flooding and sea-level rise are presently one of the major environmental challenges most coastal cities in the world are facing. We are not alone on the impacts and consequences of flooding; we are just in an era where combinations of many factors: natural and anthropogenic are working against our living.

In 2019, the World Economic Forum reported that “a 1.5⁰C increase in global temperature will generate a global sea-level rise of between 1.7 and 3.2 feet by 2100. Even if we collectively manage to keep global temperatures from rising to 2⁰C, by 2050 at least 570cities and some 800 million people will be exposed to rising seas and storm surges. The report ‘Global Risk Report 2019’ shows, around 90% of all coastal areas will be affected to varying degrees. Some cities will experience sea-level rises as high as 30 percent above the global mean, making matters worse, sprawling cities are sinking at the same time as sea water seep in. This is due to the sheer weight of growing cities, combined with the groundwater extracted by residents.

Presently, a growing number of cities are stepping up to the challenge of flooding and sea-level rise. Most are taking actions in three ways;

·        Engineering approach

·        adopting environmental approach and

·        lastly, people-oriented approach.

One of the recently accepted models of flood risk management is the involvement of citizen. The pursuit of flood risk management is changing from government to governance. 

Flood risk management implies that the competences and responsibilities to deal with flooding are not restricted to water managers, but are to be shared with spatial planners, crisis managers, insurance companies and citizens. Today, co-producing flood risk management is one of the key approaches used in mitigating the effect of flooding and sea-level rise. Now citizen involvement in co-producing flood risk management is gaining grounds worldwide,through citizen co-production, policymakers aim to increase the resilience, efficiency and legitimacy of their flood risk management strategies.

Co-production is defined by Alford (1998) as ‘the involvement of citizens, clients, consumers, volunteers and/or community organizations in producing public services as well as consuming or otherwise benefiting from them’. The concept was first launched by Parks et al. in 1981 and has since been applied in a wide range of fields. Co-production is conceptualized as an umbrella term that embodies the following dimensions:

• Co-planning: participation of citizens in the decision-making process of Flood Risk Management (FRM) measures, e.g., development of river basin management plans. In more intensive forms, participation may also inform agenda setting.
• Codelivery: participation of citizens in the implementation of Flood Risk Management (FRM) measures, such as flood protection measures at the household level.
• Comprehensive co-production: participation of citizens in the agenda setting, decision making, implementation, and evaluation of Flood Risk Management (FRM) measures, e.g., the development of an FRM plan may result from the cooperation of citizens and public authorities and therein outline responsibilities for these respective groups.

 

All over the world now, flood risk management and strategies are generally classified into four basic groups:

·        Flood Risk Prevention,

·        Flood Protection,

·        Flood preparation and

·        Flood Recovery.

Flood risk prevention involves various approach used in keeping people away from flood. Flood Prevention put in place every mechanism to keep water away from people while flood preparation involves stimulating adequate responses during flooding and flood recovery takes care of the recovery system after flooding (i.e. insurance system etc).

Citizen co-production is defined as the contribution of citizens, on an individual basis or through non-governmental organisations, to the planning and/or delivery of a public good or service. In the flood policy domain, the delivered public service is the avoidance of flood damage at societal level. Citizens can contribute to this public goal in various ways, e.g. by installing property-level protection (PLP) measures, participating in emergency planning, purchasing flood insurance, etc. Citizen engagement in response to flooding plays a particularly prominent role in FRM, where emergency response is heavily supported by various organisations.

Moving forward in Lagos, our flood risk management strategies should fully involve a co-producing system that will involve the citizens in all aspects of flood management. Currently, a change of the paradigm in flood risk management is including Environmental decision making and participatory governance. Also, the evolution of flood risk management and the citizen approach has produced many examples that can be adopted from other countries. For example: in Risk Prevention; citizens moving from flood plain areas or installing flood resilient buildings are key examples that is presently used for flood prevention.  

For flood protection, public participation for flood defence systems which can include maintaining dike infrastructures and distance between watercourses and properties are now common features in many countries. Also, in terms of flood preparation, systems such as public participation in emergency planning will put in place a standby team for volunteering during serious flood situations are now generally accepted.

 

To be continued …………………………

 

 

REFERENCES

Bergmans, A., Vandermoere, F., & Loots, I. (2014). Co-producing sustainability indicators for the port of Antwerp: How sustainability reporting creates new discursive spaces for concern and mobilisation. ESSACHESS – Journal for Communication Studies, 7(1), 107–124

Mees, H., A. Crabbé, M. Alexander, M. Kaufmann, S. Bruzzone, L. Lévy, and J. Lewandowski. 2016. Coproducing flood risk management through citizen involvement: insights from cross-country comparison in Europe. Ecology and Society 21(3):7.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08500-210307

Wehn, U., Rusca, M., Evers, J., & Lanfranchi, V. (2015). Participation in flood risk management and the potential of citizen observatories: A governance analysis. Environmental Science & Policy, 48, 225–236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. envsci.2014.12.017