ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how winners and losers can be chosen by flood managers and asks whether intentional flooding in these cases was socially just and therefore ‘fair’. It discusses critiques the impacts of two decisions in Canada and Thailand to implement intentional flooding without pre-event planning. The chapter provides an overwhelming utilitarian, cost: benefit-based approach and considers the benefits that a Rawlsian approach might have delivered to both situations, and the feasibility of implementing such a social justice or ‘fairness’ principle during emergency intentional flood events. Such intentional flooding in one location may reduce the depth of the floodwater or entirely prevent another area from flooding. Intentional flooding involves the breaching of levees or rerouting of rivers to redistribute flood risk within a basin. The Assiniboine River basin is prone to regular flooding, but experienced particularly severe flooding in the summer of 2011.
