Citation

Liao KH, Chan JKH, Huang YL. Landsc. Urban Plann. 2019; 189: 36-45.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.04.012

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Flood prevention is a predominant practice in flood hazard mitigation. Governments around the world have been striving to protect important urban centers from flooding at all cost. Often carried out through flood control infrastructure and commonly perceived as a technical exercise, flood prevention can however lead to environmental injustice. This is because flood prevention measures do not eliminate but only redistribute floodwater; they often impose new flood risks on people elsewhere or precipitate flooding in another place that would bring about the displacement of an entire community. As governments around the world have come to prioritize economic and political centers for flood protection, the costs of flood prevention are often disproportionately borne by communities that are already vulnerable, disadvantaged, and marginalized--resulting in gross injustice. However, the environmental injustice precipitated by flood prevention through the inequitable process of floodwater redistribution has yet to be systematically examined. We illustrate the problem through the case of the Taipei Area Flood Control Plan, which have unjustly harmed two marginalized communities of Zhouho and Shezidao. Because flood prevention measures are likely to be more intensively implemented in the face of increasingly extreme storms against the backdrop of accelerating urbanization, the moral cost of flood prevention requires greater attention. To address this environmental injustice, we argue for a paradigm shift towards flood adaptation in flood hazard mitigation.

Language: en

Keywords

Environmental justice; Flood adaptation; Flood control infrastructure; Flood prevention; Floodwater redistribution; Taipei