Community Flood Responce

Community Flood Preparedness

Promoting citizen and community action to deal with flooding in Central and East Europe.
In recent years, disastrous flooding events have become a recurring feature of Central and East Europe. Government programs of flood prevention and post-flood relief are proving incomplete, ineffective and costly. The Environmental Partnership for Sustainable Development has been responding by helping local communities improve their flood response/emergency preparedness through practical action environmental projects.

The program is designed to encourage citizen-based activities to manage floods in an ecological manner based on improving river basin land-use, developing local and traditional methods of water management, prevention of rapid run-off both in rural and urban areas and improving regional efforts to restore natural flood zones. The idea is to scale up and link local initiatives to reactivate the ability of natural wetlands and floodplains to alleviate flood impacts. Besides flood mitigation, this leads to ecological benefits in the form of protecting biodiversity, cleaning drinking water, and developing areas for recreation and opportunities for tourism.