Centralization in floodplain management of world rivers: A comparative case study of the Yangtze and Mississippi rivers

Numerous institutions govern land use planning, pollution abatement, water use and ecosystem service provision aspects of watershed management. In no area is this more apparent in the world’s large river systems than in floodplain management. Integrated watershed management and governance at the lowest appropriate level are advocated as the best strategies for managing land use and basin management practices in floodplains. These approaches seek to incorporate various stakeholder interests and implement context-specific policy in diverse environmental conditions. Centralization of governance however may be more conducive to efficient and effective watershed management. This project seeks to evaluate the institutional capacities of decentralized and more centralized systems to manage large river floodplains through comparative case studies of China’s Yangtze River and the Mississippi River in the United States.
Regulation of basin management practices at the local and basin-scales are advocated as the most conducive to environmental quality enhancement and flood damage mitigation. Decentralization of natural resource management is argued to be most responsive to local interests, provide flexibility for context-specificities, and establish legitimacy among stakeholders. However, centralized floodplain management has the potential to provide streamlined policy implementation and enforcement with fewer resource constraints.
Urban development and agricultural production occurring in the floodplain are economically productive land uses. Efficient management however should facilitate pollution abatement and ecosystem service provision, which also hold value . This project seeks to apply an institutional analysis lens to comparative case studies of floodplain management within two of the world’s largest and most economically-productive river basins.