The World Bank's changing conditionality for flood risk management: Analysis over six decades

This paper uses qualitative content analysis to investigate 52 of the World Bank's project financial agreements (FAs) from 1975 to 2023, searching for patterns in the flood risk management (FRM) measures they emphasise. These FAs have been chosen to investigate flood management as the the bulk of the World Bank's disaster risk management efforts are dedicated to FRM. These FAs present an opportunity in which the Bank could impose its policy preferences and set the parameters for FRM in recipient countries, thus illuminating both an important driver for change.

The results of the analysis show that the Bank has used its power to promote early adoption of integrated structural and non-structural FRM strategies in a mutually reinforcing complementary arrangement. The Bank advanced integrated FRM approaches well before other international bodies and national agencie, thus features as a world leader in this respect. Lastly, the common criticisms against the Bank of neoliberalism and gender equality are not entirely unfounded - but progress has occurred to make improvements in these areas in recent years.