From structural to systemic: Proposals to make French flood management more consistent and robust

摘要

This paper reveals contradictions and rapid evolutions in the French "natural" risk management system, and tries to understand them. Among other factors, the instability of the French legislative framework derives from the central role the French State plays in this matter, since 1982 and Tazieff's law implementation. The unwanted effects of this system, which is poorly risk prevention-oriented, lead to stress on the limits of corrective works, such as dykes, sills. It explains the recent will to strengthen civil security management, and local settlement resilience. But the effectiveness of these new tools supposes a clear acceptance of the impossibility to fully get rid of risks, and the necessity to adapt urbanization pattern to them. That would mean a political and social acceptance of the necessity and limits of political actions.