Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
17
The Practice of Power: Governance
and Flood Risk Management
COLIN GREEN
Introduction
.
means - ends
.
interests - legitimacy
.
technology - governance
.
roles - relationships
.
rights - duties.
In other words, it is impossible to meaningfully
discuss one without the other or to separate the
two parts.
Fundamentally, governance is about power: who
has it, who should have it, and what forms of
power may be used for what purposes by whom.
Therefore, definitions of governance are necessar-
ily contested; in particular, any attempt to define
'good' governance specifies both who should have
power and what forms of power should be used.
This chapter seeks to set out instead to analyse the
nature of governance, and the issues that must
be addressed, rather than to be prescriptive as to
the most appropriate allocation, forms and uses of
power. Chapter 18, on stakeholder engagement,
then focuses on the problems of governance in
a complex society.
Analytically, governance is centred upon dual-
ities as shown in the classic Yin-Yang diagram
of two conflicting but complementary elements.
Not only must the two elements be managed as
a whole, but commonly each element can only
be properly understood in conjunction with the
other. The Yin-Yang diagram is thus an early
example of the 'figure-ground' problem: for exam-
ple, the Rubin's optical illusion of the drawing of a
candlestick that can also be seen as the profiles of
two faces (Kennedy 1974). Governance is full of
such dualities, notably:
.
power - rules
.
Sustainable Development and Governance
Sustainable development requires us to do more
with less. Hence, the three obvious questions are:
1
More 'what'?
2
Less 'what'?
3
How?
The more 'what' is usually taken to include the
achievement of societal objectives such as devel-
opment for those currently in poverty and justice
(Defra 2005). The less 'what' is taken to mean
both the more efficient use and the more sus-
tainable use of natural resources. The 'how' ques-
tion is the critical one; doing more with less
requires that we do better than we have in the
past. The extent to which we can do more with
less, i.e. to be more successful in achieving our
objectives whilst both using less resources and
using those resources more sustainably, is deter-
mined by:
1
The physical and chemical laws. For example,
an engine cannot be more efficient than a Carnot
engine nor can we outwit the law of the conser-
vation of mass. These laws define what is theo-
retically possible.
institutions - organizations
