Environmental disasters, and especially floods, are among today's biggest sustainability challenges. The number and intensity of floods are increasing, challenging current governance approaches. Governments worldwide are looking to diversify their flood risk management and adaptation strategies, among others, by increasing resident involvement in flood risk governance. Such involvement of individuals shifts responsibilities from public to private actors. A clear understanding of the extent and implications of this shift is difficult to reach as theoretical perspectives on the concept of responsibility vary. Similarly, grounds for attributing responsibility for flood preparedness and response differ across countries. This lack of analytical and empirical clarity complicates academic and policy discourses on what it actually means to ‘be responsible’. The current article systematises these different approaches to responsibility in flood risk governance. To improve current knowledge on residents' responsibilities in flood risk governance, we present a conceptual framework that distinguishes among four theoretical notions of responsibility: legal responsibility, accountability, perceived responsibility, and moral responsibility. These notions are elucidated with the help of examples of flood risk governance practices in the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. We find that the four notions are closely intertwined. In addition, this article documents divergences between what individuals perceive as their own responsibility in flood risk management and the responsibilities that governments assume. We conclude with a discussion on the tensions between perceived responsibilities and the other three notions. Explicit, transparent and open discussion on these tensions is needed to allow attribution of responsibility in flood risk governance and to reconsider residents' roles in particular.@en

Increasing impacts from disasters and climate hazards have prompted international efforts to promote the development of national disaster risk reduction and resilience (DRRR) strategies intended to reduce mortality and other losses. The development of such strategies is the subject of target E of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030). Furthermore, an increasing understanding of the need to address the root causes of risk has led to calls for greater coherence between strategies that focus on DRRR, and those dedicated to climate change adaptation and sustainable development goals. The purpose of this paper is to increase knowledge on associated decision-making in general, and in Sweden in particular. We analyze the relevance and scope of a Swedish DRRR strategy, and identify drivers and barriers to integrated development and implementation. Based on document reviews, and interviews and group discussions with representatives in Sweden and six European countries, the results highlight a growing awareness that much remains to be learnt and shared between domains in order to progress towards integrated DRRR and more climate-proof sustainable development. In practice, most strategies are developed independently and related actors work in silos, leading to power struggles with negative impacts on national and local capacity. At the same time, windows of opportunity are appearing for the development of national DRRR strategies and increased policy coherence. We discuss these, and present some policy recommendations.

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