SUPERVISOR: Thomas THALER

PROJECT ASSIGNED TO: Marion WALLNER

On a global scale, the frequency and intensity of flooding have increased as a result of climate change (Alfieri et al., 2017; Dottori et al., 2018). In response, existing flood policies have shifted from controlling rivers through technical measures to integrated flood risk management (Löschner, 2018; Wang et al., 2022). A key component of this shift is the prioritization of nature-based solutions (NbS) throughout the catchment.

NbS generally refer to "actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems that effectively and adaptively address societal challenges while benefiting human well-being and biodiversity" (Cohen-Shacham et al., 2016, p. 2). Although the uptake of NbS has been stimulated by the European Union, their implementation remains challenging (Brillinger et al., 2020). This can be attributed to the fact that the effectiveness of NbS is difficult to quantify, strongly dependent on their location and subject to high uncertainties (Chausson et al., 2020; Raška et al., 2022; Waylen et al., 2018). Another major reason is that NbS require much more land than grey infrastructure - making their implementation dependent on privately owned land and prone to causing conflicts of interests over land use (Hartmann et al., 2019; Nordbeck et al., 2023; Pardoe et al., 2011). NbS thus highlight the necessity of engaging with stakeholders, such as landowners, land managers, citizens, grassroot organizations etc. (Thaler et al., 2023).

Fig. 1: Picture of the Austrian frontrunning region: the Lafnitz catchment. © Arthur Schindelegger

Stakeholder engagement is not only expected to secure cooperation among landowners, long-term use and more accepted place-based solutions but it is also reported to foster social learning (Anderson & Renaud, 2021; Hakkarainen et al., 2022; Soini et al., 2023). Yet, in many cases, stakeholder engagement is not living up to its expectations. This can be attributed to (i) low willingness of citizens to participate in an engagement process, as NbS are perceived as the responsibility of the authorities, (ii) conflicting points of view and interest and the difficulty of bridging diverse disciplinary backgrounds, (iii) missing or insufficient expertise on process facilitation or even (iv) institutional barriers hampering stakeholder engagement (Ferreira et al., 2020; Soini et al., 2023; Thaler et al., 2019; Ugolini et al., 2018; Zingraff-Hamed et al., 2020).

Therefore, the proposed PhD will address the role of stakeholder engagement as a decisive factor for the implementation of NbS on privately owned land and its potential to promote transformative changes in the flood risk management sector. More specifically it aims (i) to study how Austrian flood risk management authorities approach and employ stakeholder engagement,
(ii) to evaluate how stakeholder engagement processes consider conflicts of interests over land use and (iii) to examine if these conflicts encourage transformative changes in practices of authorities.

The PhD is embedded in the EU Horizon project “Land4Climate”. It aims to get access to private land for the implementation of NbS, not by buying land, but through the development of innovative governance schemes, such as land readjustments schemes, strategic land leases and easements. The idea is to collaboratively implement NBS on private land in six frontrunning regions: the Country of Euskirchen (DE), the Lafnitz river catchment (AT), the city of Krasna Lipa (CZ) and the Rovana river basin in Slovakia (SK). Lessons learnt will be transferred into more generic hands-on knowledge which will then be conveyed to replicating regions in the six countries. By doing so, Land4Climate shall foster mainstreaming of NbS across the EU (CINEA, 2023).

Link to the Project Website: www.land4climate.eu

 

Referenzen:

Alfieri, L., Bisselink, B., Dottori, F., Naumann, G., de Roo, A., Salamon, P., Wyser, K., & Feyen, L. (2017). Global projections of river flood risk in a warmer world. Earth’s Future, 5(2), 171–182. doi.org/10.1002/2016EF000485

Anderson, C. C., & Renaud, F. G. (2021). A review of public acceptance of nature-based solutions: The ‘why’, ‘when’, and ‘how’ of success for disaster risk reduction measures. Ambio, 50(8), 1552–1573. doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01502-4

Brillinger, M., Dehnhardt, A., Schwarze, R., & Albert, C. (2020). Exploring the uptake of nature-based measures in flood risk management: Evidence from German federal states. Environmental Science & Policy, 110, 14–23. doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2020.05.008

Chausson, A., Turner, B., Seddon, D., Chabaneix, N., Girardin, C. A. J., Kapos, V., Key, I., Roe, D., Smith, A., Woroniecki, S., & Seddon, N. (2020). Mapping the effectiveness of nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation. Global Change Biology, 26(11), 6134–6155. doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15310

CINEA. (2023). Grant Agreement Project 101112781—Land4Climate (not published).

Cohen-Shacham, E., Walters, G., Janzen, C., & Maginnis, S. (Eds.). (2016). Nature-based solutions to address global societal challenges. IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature. doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.CH.2016.13.en

Dottori, F., Szewczyk, W., Ciscar, J.-C., Zhao, F., Alfieri, L., Hirabayashi, Y., Bianchi, A., Mongelli, I., Frieler, K., Betts, R. A., & Feyen, L. (2018). Increased human and economic losses from river flooding with anthropogenic warming. Nature Climate Change, 8(9), Article 9. doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0257-z

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EU. (2021). Forging a climate-resilient Europe—The new EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change.

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Hakkarainen, V., Mäkinen-Rostedt, K., Horcea-Milcu, A., D’Amato, D., Jämsä, J., & Soini, K. (2022). Transdisciplinary research in natural resources management: Towards an integrative and transformative use of co-concepts. Sustainable Development, 30(2), 309–325. doi.org/10.1002/sd.2276

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Löschner, L. (2018). Conceptualizing the Spatial Turn in Flood Risk Management. The Case of Austria’s Changing Flood Policies. doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.10936.98569

Nordbeck, R., Seher, W., Grüneis, H., Herrnegger, M., & Junger, L. (2023). Conflicting and complementary policy goals as sectoral integration challenge: An analysis of sectoral interplay in flood risk management. Policy Sciences, 56(3), 595–612. doi.org/10.1007/s11077-023-09503-8

Pardoe, J., Penning-Rowsell, E., & Tunstall, S. (2011). Floodplain conflicts: Regulation and negotiation. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 11(10), 2889–2902. doi.org/10.5194/nhess-11-2889-2011

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Thaler, T., Attems, M.-S., Bonnefond, M., Clarke, D., Gatien-Tournat, A., Gralepois, M., Fournier, M., Murphy, C., Rauter, M., Papathoma-Köhle, M., Servain, S., & Fuchs, S. (2019). Drivers and barriers of adaptation initiatives – How societal transformation affects natural hazard management and risk mitigation in Europe. Science of The Total Environment, 650, 1073–1082. doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.08.306

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Ugolini, F., Sanesi, G., Steidle, A., & Pearlmutter, D. (2018). Speaking “Green”: A Worldwide Survey on Collaboration among Stakeholders in Urban Park Design and Management. Forests, 9(8), Article 8. doi.org/10.3390/f9080458

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Waylen, K. A., Holstead, K. L., Colley, K., & Hopkins, J. (2018). Challenges to enabling and implementing Natural Flood Management in Scotland. Journal of Flood Risk Management, Journal of Flood Risk Management. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jfr3.12301

Zingraff-Hamed, A., Hüesker, F., Lupp, G., Begg, C., Huang, J., Oen, A., Vojinovic, Z., Kuhlicke, C., & Pauleit, S. (2020). Stakeholder Mapping to Co-Create Nature-Based Solutions: Who Is on Board? Sustainability, 12(20), Article 20. doi.org/10.3390/su12208625