Below is an essay from Dr Catherine Butler from the School of Psychology, Cardiff University.
Climate change is very often
characterised either explicitly or implicitly as a future issue – one that is
temporally distant, the implications of which will be felt at some unspecified
time often assumed as being in the long term future. The effects of climate
change are, however, for some of us already being felt, both in a direct sense
– people are experiencing climate related events like floods – or in more
indirect ways – through changes that arise with attempts to respond to anticipated
futures.
In Beasts of the Southern Wild, we find a world in which the flood waters
have come upon Hushpuppy (a young girl), her father (Wink) and their small
community within ‘the bathtub’ – an area created by a sprawling levee. Though
the melting icecaps portrayed in the film are suggestive of its location in a
future time, the world depicted is very much one that resonates with current realities
for people around the world. In many respects, then, the film offers an opening
for thinking about contemporary UK policy around flooding and climate change.
In the world that is invoked through the film, we find notions of
anticipation and preparedness for futures. These are delivered to us through
Hushpuppy’s teacher’s call to her pupils to “learn how to survive” and be ready
for what is to come, and through the knowledge that the
community sits outside of the levee built to protect those inside from the
flood waters. We thus find that there has long been an expectation for a flood
and that efforts have been made (both by those in the bathtub and those behind
the levee) to prepare for the future.
Similarly, in contemporary UK flood
policy we find efforts to anticipate and prepare for floods. This involves
moves to incorporate in decision-making scientific knowledge of climate change
and the implications of this knowledge for flooding, i.e. floods are growing in
intensity and frequency and are expected to continue to do so into the future.
This recognition has resulted for some in a problematising of flood defences as
notions of building ever higher walls are called into question. One response to
this problematisation has been the suggestion that instead of continuing to
defend against floods, moves should be made to ‘make space for water’ and
engender acceptance of floods as part of life.
This policy approach encompasses a
wide range of proposed measures, including reducing development on flood
plains, retrofitting of properties to make them more resilient to flooding, or installing
household level flood protection measures. Despite these moves within flood
policy, flood defences of the sort depicted in the film, remain key to flood
policy and management in the UK. This continuation of flood defence, alongside
notions of accepting and living with floods, raises questions regarding “who”
has to make space for water and “who” gets protected from floods. The answer to
these questions relates closely to the particular approach being taken to think
about the future.
The wider policy context is allied
with ways of thinking about and understanding the future primarily in terms of
‘risk’. Risk assessment represents a
common way of attempting to anticipate and guard against future disasters. Risk
assessment techniques generally involve a calculation of probability (how
likely is an event to happen) and consequences (how significant are the
consequences – though some efforts are made to incorporate more social and
environmental criteria, this is generally assessed in economic terms).
Tewkesbury, 2007
A key use of the knowledge derived from risk assessments is to take
decisions about where to allocate money for flood defence schemes (both for new
and maintenance of existing schemes). In the UK, first in line for flood
defences are those at highest risk but only when this combines with highest
consequences. Because of an emphasis on economic calculations of consequences,
the areas where most will be lost in economic terms are those that receive
financing for flood defences. This focus on economic consequences is, in large
part, driven by the strong imperative that exists to maintain what is known as “the
gentleman’s agreement” between state and insurance companies– an agreement
whereby government finances flood defences and insurance companies compensate
for flood damages. It is worth noting that this contrasts with approaches in
most other countries where public, rather than private, insurance is the norm.
A perverse outcome of this way of assessing where to allocate flood
defences is that certain places and people get protected (generally those more
economically costly if flooded), while others are left, as with the community
in the film, outside of the levee. For those of us left outside “in the wild”, we
are exhorted to learn to live with floods, to take on responsibility for
protecting ourselves, and to make space for water. This is not to be entirely
critical of this approach – this is a difficult area in which to govern because
there are no easy or straight forward answers and maintaining the gentlemen’s
agreement, so that insurance remains available for those at risk of flood, is
undoubtedly important. But this emphasis on maintaining the agreement does
bring a focus on economics and a neglect of the other dimensions of flood
beyond financial costs.
One approach (currently being undertaken for some coastal areas in
Norfolk) is for the abandonment of some properties and places where defences
cannot be (economically) justified. In examining people’s experience of these
processes we find an illustration of the difficulties associated with thinking
in terms of economics – that is, it facilitates a neglect of the clear importance
of the connections people hold to the places and homes in which they live that
make the idea of giving up space to floods almost impossible for many of us to
embrace. We find this difficulty reflected in the film’s narrative with the
desire of Wink to return to his home ‘in the bathtub’ after being taken behind
the levee. The film’s depiction of Wink’s, and eventually Hushpuppy’s, return
to their home highlights the significance of connections to place, as well as
differences in perspective regarding the value we place on things. It redirects
us to think about such connections, perspectives and values as important
considerations in the efforts to respond to anticipated futures. These aspects
of importance in understanding the impacts of flooding are often lost in
contemporary policy debates and in processes of decision-making through the
lens of risk assessment.
An alternative idea that has gained increasing popularity in the
context of increasing flood events and a division between those that will be
protected and those that will not, is the notion of increasing resilience. Though
the concept of resilience takes many different forms, a typical definition is
‘the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing
change, so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure and
feedbacks’ (Walker and Salt, 2006, p.32). This idea has been applied to social
systems and particularly to thinking about communities as the focus for
engendering greater resilience. Those of us that are not to be protected from
floods and find ourselves outside of the levee have to become resilient and
adapt to our changing environment but those within defence schemes remain
static, continuing as before. This seeming clash between ideas of accepting and
being resilient flooding, and the continuation of defence for some raises difficult
justice questions – particularly because of the role that economics plays in
the decision-making process. As in the film, ultimately, some will be protected
by defences, while others will be left out in the wild to find their own ways
to survive in a changing world.
Related Reading
Butler,
C. “Risk and the Future: Floods in a Changing Climate”, Twenty-First
Century Society: Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences, 3(2): 159 – 171. (2008)
Butler, C. and
Pidgeon, N. “From ‘Flood Defence’ to ‘Flood Risk Management’: Exploring
governance, responsibility and blame”, Environment
and Planning C: Government and Policy, 29: 533 – 547 (2011)
Huber,
M. “Reforming the UK Flood Insurance Regime: The breakdown of a gentlemen’s
agreement”. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/36049/1/Disspaper18.pdf.
(2004)
O’Riordan, T.
Nicholson-Cole, S.A. and Milligan, J. Designing Sustainable Coastal Futures, Twenty-First
Century Society: Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences, 3(2): 145 – 157 (2008)
Walker, B. and Salt,
D. Resilience Thinking: Sustaining ecosystems and people in a changing
world, Washington DC: Island
Press, (2006)
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