Legal Implications of Natural Floods Management: Lithuania Case Study

Floods are a reoccurring global phenomenon. Practical implementation of flood risk management relies heavily on grey infrastructure with a lesser focus on nature-based solutions (NBS). With the rising awareness about ecosystem services, natural flood management measures are getting more attention from scientists and policymakers. Lithuanian authorities in the national flood risk management plan provide four NBS for flood management: afforestation, wetlands restorations, agri-environmental measures, and water retention in urban areas (e.g., ponds). However, implementation of the NBS requires more land than grey infrastructure. In the case of Lithuania, in some instances, the NBS require a change of the land use or impacts upon the private land. Therefore, it can be influenced by the legal regulations related to land use planning and protection of private property rights. The problems may occur in case of the insufficient, incomplete, incoherent, or contradictory legal framework. The analysis revealed that the Law on the Land, the Law on the Special Land Use Conditions, and the Law on the Territorial Planning are insufficiently coordinated, which may influence implementation of the NBS on the private property. The afforestation is foreseen only for the public land. However, those lands are mainly used for the agriculture, and in this case possibilities to change the land use are restricted. A similar problem may occur if the area for the afforestation lays within the protected area. The Law on the Protected Areas allows land use changes only in exceptional circumstances; the flood mitigation is not one of them. The incoherence or incompleteness of law, which can hamper implementation of NBS, can occur not only in Lithuania. Therefore, the study can be a starting point for further investigations and solutions in this regard.