New WWF & US AID report on using nature to manage rising flood risk

Leading environmental organisation WWF has published a new report setting out an integrated framework for flood management, drawing on policy, green infrastructure and conventional engineering to help communities adapt and better manage growing flood risk.   Introducing the report “Natural and Nature-Based Flood Management: A Green Guide”, the NGO said that worldwide, flood risk will continue to rise as cities grow larger and rainstorms become more intense, making conventional engineering insufficient as the sole approach to flood management.

“We can’t afford to continue to invest in short term solutions that don’t take into account how weather patterns, sea levels and land use are changing the nature and severity of flooding,” said Anita van Breda, World Wildlife Fund’s senior director of environment and disaster. “The traditional approaches we’ve used to manage flooding in the past – like sea walls and levees – in most cases, won’t work in isolation for the types of floods we’re likely to experience in the future.”

The Flood Green Guide, developed in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development Office of U.S.  Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA), provides a step-by-step framework for flood managers to understand the factors contributing to flood risk in their region, and to pull together the appropriate policies, nature based solutions, and traditional engineering to address the problem. Click here to download the report.