Flood and Adaptation Financing: From “Project” Mode to “Living with” Mode at the Service of the EU

Flood management has been approached as infrastructure projects to reduce the impact of floods heights or waves. Experiences have exposed, as the recent floods in Emilia Romagna, the lack of preparedness beyond flood management tools and policy instruments. With climate change, it is no longer just a matter of minimising flood and damages; it is adapting to and living with new conditions, including safeguarding people’s lives, health, culture, and the economy. This perspective firmly places flood management into the integrated adaptation policy realm, spanning well over many fields and jurisdictions. Policy dimension is determined both by the fiscal space and the recognition and acceptance that risks call for change. Understanding risks and creating social acceptance are paramount to financing policies that no longer focus on the “building back better” approach. Taking measures now to avoid disaster, damages, and losses to offer a perspective for living and producing with new conditions is a paradigm shift. This begs the question who should pay? This study, which can be considered as a policy paper, addresses this question by criticising the policies and financing approaches employed hitherto, including the “build-back-better”, embedding them in the umbrella concept “Project” Mode. The issue is investigated in the EU context, where both adaptation policy and flood risk frameworks are operative, not always in synergy though. By framing this EU framework under the policy integration lens, this study explores the EU adaptation and flood policies through a series of key factors necessary to respond fully to finance and policy effectiveness, which are: money, priorities, proactiveness, and private sector involvement. Insights and recommendations are provided and tailored at the service of the EU context, which is at the beginning of a transition to sustainable financing and policy operativity, going beyond the simplistic “Project” mode.