Flooding and Sustainable Flood Management in the UK
Social Sciences
ANTH 194U - 01 Environmental Anthropology
This paper explores the political, cultural, and environmental intersections of flooding and flood management in the UK. As state funding for existing infrastructure goes down, risk of flood damage goes up, effectively reassigning the cost to effected individuals. While it is reasonable to accept that the state's entanglement in built infrastructure is proving too costly, budget cuts create poorly maintained flood defenses. This increases the risk to communities developed under the pretenses that these floods would always protect them. The impact of climate change only intensifies this situation and the urgency to transition away from expensive infrastructure-based flood management is becoming increasingly apparent. This means re-imagining our modern relationship with both nature and the state and moving towards less expensive, more natural method of flood management.
