Flood Prevention Governance of Paris : The Issue of Institutional Fragmention in the Attempt of Reconnecting to the Biosphere

Abstract: Paris has been recurrently affected by floods in the recent years. Such events of heavy precipitations are expected to grow in intensity while being concentrated on shorter periods of time. Subsequently, the risk of floods will increase. The municipality must act accordingly and achieve resilience. Paris is part of the biosphere as an social-ecological system, human activities and the environment are complexely interrelated. The system must become resilient to surprise events to ensure its sustainability. Adaptive governance has been recognized in the field of flood risk management as the means to achieve such resilience. An adaptive governance presents five characteristics: a multilevel feature, public participation, tailor-made solutions, appropriate scale and learning capacity. This thesis aims to analyse how the municipality of Paris incorporates the adaptive approach in its flood risk governance. It also aims to identify the elements it lacks to develop a successful adaptive flood risk governance. Based on the analysis of interviews held with officials of several departments of the municipality and of a selection of official text-based documents several conclusions were drawn. When analysing the multilevel feature of the flood risk governance it appeared that institutional fragmentation was the result of a lack of leadership at the scale of Paris. Regarding public participation, I observed a lack of measures in the governance, both at the basin scale and at the municipality’s scale. However, the municipality does possess the tools to involve citizens in the decision-making process. Tailor-made solutions are duely recommended and implemented, however, multiple constraints hinder their implementation. The governance showed particular interest in the role of the appropriate scale to adress flood risk. The learning capacity is clearly displayed in plans and honed by the municipality. It appears that the adaptive flood risk governance of Paris is in need of a leader that will coordinate the actors, make the strategies coherent and address the constraints to the implementation of tailor-made solutions.