Introduction: Governing Flooding in Asia’s Urban Transition

The 21^st Century not only marks the advent of Asia’s first urban era in which more than half of its population lives in cities; it is also seeing the emergence of an age of increasing frequency and intensity of environmental disasters. Urban flooding leads disaster trends and is directly impacting the lives and livelihoods of shares of Asia’s population. By 2010 more than 1.5 billion people were residing in urban areas in Asia, accounting for over half of the global urban population. The pervasive coastal and riparian orientation of Asia’s rapid urban transition is placing greater numbers of people in locations that are highly exposed to floods, cyclones, tropical storms and tsunamis. Human transformations of the natural and built environment of cities substantially add to global climate change as interactive sources of the heightening occurrence of floods. Moreover, floods contribute to compound disasters that generate cascading effects with multiple sources, interactive impacts and long-term social and economic recovery issues. The pervasive and socially uneven impacts of floods bring acute awareness of flooding as a political issue for participatory governance. In light of these interwoven complexities, responses can no longer be carried out as sector management tasks, but must instead adopt multi-sector, multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder approaches to disaster governance to directly link knowledge to action in preparing for, responding to and recovering from floods in urbanizing Asia.

导论：亚洲城市变迁中的洪水治理

关键词：治理，洪水，复合型灾害，城市，亚洲

二十一世纪不仅标志着亚洲第一次跨入城市时代，超过一半以上的人口现居在城市中，而且也见证着亚洲迈进了日益频发而且程度加剧的环境灾难的时期。城市洪水居于各种灾害之首，正在直接影响到亚洲人口中越来越多的民众的生命与生计。截至2010年亚洲有超过15亿的人口居住在城市地区，占全球城市人口的一半以上。亚洲快速的城市化变迁具有普遍趋于沿海和沿江河岸发展的特点，这使更多的人口居住于极度易受洪水、飓风、热带风暴和海啸影响的地段。人类活动对城市的自然和人为环境的改造极大地加诸于全球气候变化，形成交互影响而增加洪水暴发频次的根源。进一步而言，洪水也造成了复合型灾害，产生梯级瀑布式的波及效应，具有多根源、互动性影响、并带来长期的社会和经济恢复问题等特点。洪水的影响广泛而且具有社会分布不均等性，这使得人们深刻认识到，洪水是参与性治理的一个政治性问题。由于这些相互交织的复杂性，对洪水的应对就不应再作为部门管理任务而展开，而必须采纳灾害治理中的多部门、跨学科以及多利益相关人的方法，在为亚洲城市化中的洪水做准备工作、作出对应以及从中恢复时将知识和行动直接联系在一起。

Translated from English by Li Guo