Managing water as a socio-technical system: the shift from ‘experts’ to ‘alliances’

This paper argues that the management of flooding in England has shifted from a technocratic focus, in which engineering expertise was reified, to a more socially diffuse set of approaches seeking to disassemble the predominant institutional hegemony. Some explanation for this shift, commonly referred to as the transition from flood defence to flood risk management, can be found by situating changes historically: Food shortages after World War I prompted the Land Drainage Act (1930), generating a new financial structure linked to increased food productivity. The Act created a centralised funding mechanism for flood defences, enabling large-scale re-engineering of the countryside, but removed the guarantee of an individual's protection from flooding that had existed since the Sewers Act of 1532. Climate change and ongoing development of urban areas on flood plains present new challenges to flood risk management. Looking forward, this paper illustrates that the concept of learning alliances, which draw on Habermassian ideas of communicative action, provide an appropriate platform to facilitate the transition to effective flood risk management. Through reference to a current English case study, the Don Catchment learning alliance (situated within the wider Yorkshire and Humber learning alliance), this paper maps ongoing transitions.