Distributional effects of flood risk management—a cross-country comparison of preflood compensation

We seek to examine the manner in which either the EU member states of France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden or parts of them, such as the country of England in the UK or the Flemish Region in Belgium, deal with the distributional effects of the flood risk management strategies prevention, defense, and mitigation. Measures carried out in each of these strategies can cause preflood harm, as in the devaluation of property or loss of income. However, different member states and authorities address this harm in different ways. A descriptive overview of the different compensation regimes in the field of flood risk management is followed by an analysis of these differences and an explanation of what may cause them, such as the geographical differences that lead to differences in the way that they interfere with private rights and the dominant legal principles that underlie compensation regimes. An elaborated compensation regime could lead to more equitable and legitimate flood risk management because the burdens are fairly spread and all interests—including those of injured parties—are considered in the decision-making process. Our aim is to stimulate the hardly existent discussion on the financial harm that is caused by measures to prevent floods (preflood), in addition to the already existing discussion on the ex post flood distributional effects.