Building Flood-Resilient Cities
According to a news report recently released by IRIN news agency, there are about 3,000 low-lying cities vulnerable to frequent floods in the world. Asia accounts for more than half of the developing world’s cities most vulnerable to flooding, according to UN-HABITAT. Nine of the top 10 coastal flood-prone cities by 2070, including Bangkok, are in Asia, according to a recent World Bank report. As per UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), since the 1980s, the risk of economic loss due to floods in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries has increased by more than 160 percent, outstripping the growth of GDP per capita. Adri Verwey, an urban flood expert at Deltares, a Netherlands-based water management think-tank, has opined: “A master plan capturing the city’s development visions, priorities and vulnerability is the first step. Cities need to decide the levels of security that they want and which areas need more protection.”
The private sector should be directly involved in flood management, said Jerry Velasquez, senior regional coordinator for UNISDR Asia Pacific.
“What we need from them is not only corporate social responsibility and money, but their active involvement. It can be as simple as building a dyke around their factories, choosing the right locations to build factories and coming up with disaster contingency plans.” According to Takeya Kimio, a visiting senior adviser at the Bangkok office of Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), “Investing in flood prevention is a calculated choice. There are only two options, either reduce the speed of development or invest more in flood control.”
