Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) is essential for balancing coordinated water management with developmental needs and ecological sustainability. However, the escalating frequency and severity of extreme hazard events, such as floods, exacerbate risks to water resources and socio-economic development. At the same time, inefficiency of IWRM has caused flooding of many densely occupied regions. The aim of this study is to explore if there is an association between the frequency (number of events) and severity (fatalities, people affected) of flood disasters and the degree of water policy implementation on a national level. In the field of policy research, there are differing views on whether disasters facilitate policy change. Many have studied these contested assumptions, although previous research consists mostly of case studies or large-N studies that include several types of disasters. Here, regression analysis is used to study specifically flood disasters and water policy implementation. This cross-sectional study seeks to explore whether floods can explain why countries have made different progress in their IWRM implementation at a given point in time, in 2023. Data on 923 flood disasters between 2018-2022 will be combined with survey data on SDG indicator 6.5.1 tracking the progress on SDG 6 and assesses the status of IWRM implementation across the world. The results show significant relationships between severity measures of floods and status of IWRM, which could be small signals for an association between flood disasters and water policy implementation. However, the relationships vary in direction and strength, by element of IWRM and time-period, and therefore showing no strong association. This result goes in line with results from previous study and the ongoing debate within the policy field.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-530489 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Avelli, Martina |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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