Brian Robert Cook, The University of Melbourne; Nicholas Harrigan, Macquarie University, and Peter Kamstra, The University of Melbourne

Weekend storms and flooding in New South Wales led to the NSW State Emergency Service responding to more than 1,600 incidents across the state.

This follows last week’s flash floods in Victoria, where cars were swept to sea and people raced to escape. Many affected were holidaymakers but even locals were caught unprepared.

Previous flood-preparedness approaches have proved insufficient. Government and risk agencies have relied on top-down approaches that broadcast information to people and then expect them to act on it.

Despite decades of increasingly sophisticated warnings and campaigns, attempting to tell people what to do has delivered uneven and often limited results.

So what actually works?

This question was at the heart of our new paper, published in the Journal of Hydrology, which involved engaging with 641 households in flood-prone areas of Kingston and Darebin in the Greater Melbourne area.

We found a more participatory one-on-one approach leads to behaviour changes that actually reduce risk to people and property. That means really listening to people about what they know and how they feel about flood risk.

What we did

The study used a real-world, before-and-after research design to understand how households decide to reduce flood risk. We used a methodology called Community Engagement for Disaster Risk Reduction, conceived by one of us (Brian Cook) but implemented by an extensive team, which prioritises meaningful human engagement over simply spreading awareness or telling people what to do.

Our researchers worked with households in flood-prone areas, holding one-on-one conversations.

Each household completed an initial survey-interview about their experiences, perceptions, and past actions.

Researchers returned months later to repeat the process and record changes.

By combining survey data with recorded conversations, our study tracked what people actually did over time.

What we found

Our research found people made practical changes to reduce flood risk after these engagements.

What mattered was not being told something, but having the space to talk through their own situation, receive follow-up material, and feel supported in making decisions relevant to them.

One participant reflected:

I can’t recall the detail of the conversation but certainly learned from the links you sent me in reference to the SES and the responses to various potential disasters.

Others described how seeing their home in context helped:

I think the maps and the resources that [your research assistant] sent me are what increased my awareness; I think I looked at the map and where we live, and I think I saw that it was probably the risk of flooding was worse than I thought it was.

For some, the engagement helped them think through

What to do if there’s a flood, acting early, making sure everyone’s safe, just like a bushfire.

Several participants described small but meaningful steps, such as:

I’m getting my emergency box together, so if something happens then I will be prepared or at least know what to grab and run for my life.

The conversations also shaped people’s connections with others. One said they:

Got in contact with a couple more neighbours since then, just exchanged numbers so that if they see something happening in our place, or vice versa, that we’ve got a contact for them to call.

Another said:

When it came time to renew my insurance policy, double checked it for our flood cover.

One explained:

I increased my house, contents, and building insurance.

Importantly, participants often framed flood risk as something shared and ongoing, not a problem solved by individual vigilance. One reflected:

There are a lot of leaves in the driveway that I went and swept up and put in my bin and then I thought “I’m never going to get them all in my bin”. I needed to make it a council issue rather than an individual owner’s issue. And if the leaves aren’t swept up, they go in the drains and then we get flooding in the driveway.

Another said:

I have asked the body corporate if they could do some new concreting because the ground has settled and that’s more risky. The water actually can come in [to the house] if we have a lot of rain.

Change emerged through feeling supported, being taken seriously, and acting within everyday constraints.

Where to from here?

In our study, change didn’t occur because people were instructed, persuaded, or repeatedly told what to do.

Nor was it the result of improved messaging, scarier warnings, or more information.

What mattered was participatory learning over time: people being invited into respectful conversations, treated as capable decision-makers, and supported to work through risk in ways that made sense within their own lives.

When people are engaged as partners rather than passive recipients, learning becomes relational, actions feel legitimate, and responsibility is shared across households, neighbours, and institutions.

Is it affordable?

Well, continuing on the current, ineffective path might well be even costlier in the long-term. Governments spend vast amounts on each advertisement campaign, with underwhelming results.

The 2022 floods along Australia’s east coast cost around A$7.7 billion in Queensland alone. If you reduced the damages by 10% you’d have more than $700 million in savings.

Engaging one-on-one with each household in high risk flood zones sounds expensive, but so too are many other tailored services provided by governments in Australia. Think, for instance, of home visits by a midwife or child health nurse after a person gives birth, or an in-home assessment provided by My Aged Care. As a society, we’ve decided those one-on-one engagements, while costly, are worth it.

Our research suggests it’s time we consider a similar approach with disaster risk reduction.

We know what works

Disaster preparedness has for too long persisted with approaches that seek to persuade, instruct, or direct.

But as recent events confirm, disasters do not unfold in neat or predictable ways.

Floods demand judgement, improvisation, and quick decisions made under extreme stress. What’s required isn’t simple compliance with predetermined instructions, but learning that can be adapted and adjusted in the moment.

Crucially, nearly all participants reported enjoying or appreciating the engagements, which helped spread the word and support further community connections.

When people are engaged in conversations that take their circumstances seriously, they build confidence and capacity to respond to unpredictable situations.

This is why participatory engagement and collaboration sit at the heart of the durable risk reduction we will need in an increasingly dangerous future.

Brian Robert Cook, Associate Professor of Geography, The University of Melbourne; Nicholas Harrigan, Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Sociology, Macquarie University, and Peter Kamstra, Post-doctoral Research Fellow of Geography, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jonas Gamso, Arizona State University and Hossain Ahmed Taufiq, Arizona State University

Oceans shape everyday life in powerful ways. They cover 70% of the planet, carry 90% of global trade, and support millions of jobs and the diets of billions of people. As global competition intensifies and climate change accelerates, the world’s oceans are also becoming the front line of 21st-century geopolitics.

How policymakers handle these challenges will affect food supplies, the price of goods and national security.

Right now, international cooperation is under strain, but there are many ways to help keep the peace. The tools of diplomacy range from formal international agreements, like the High Seas Treaty for protecting marine life, which goes into effect on Jan. 17, 2026, to deals between countries, to efforts led by companies, scientists and issue-focused organizations.

Examples of each can be found in how the world is dealing with rising tensions over Arctic shipping, seafloor mining and overfishing. As researchers in international trade and diplomacy at Arizona State University in the Thunderbird School of Global Management’s Ocean Diplomacy Lab, we work with groups affected by ocean pressures like these to identify diplomatic tools – both inside and outside government – that can help avoid conflict.

Arctic shipping: New sea lanes, new risks

As the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cover diminishes, shipping routes that were once impassable most of the year are opening up.

For companies, these routes – such as the Northern Sea Route along Russia’s coast and the Northwest Passage through Canada’s Arctic Archipelago – promise shorter transit times, lower fuel costs and fewer choke points than traditional passages.

However, Arctic shipping also raises complex challenges.

The U.S., Russia, China and several European countries have each taken steps to establish an economic and military presence in the Arctic Ocean, often with overlapping claims and competing strategic aims. For example, Russia closed off access to much of the Barents Sea while it conducted missile tests near Norway in 2025. NATO has also been patrolling the same sea.

Geopolitical tensions compound the practical dangers in Arctic waters that are poorly charted, where emergency response capacity is limited and where extreme weather is common.

As more commercial vessels move through these waters, a serious incident – whether triggered by a political confrontation or weather – could be difficult to contain and costly for marine ecosystems and global supply chains.

The Arctic Council is the region’s primary official forum for the Arctic countries to work together, but it is explicitly barred from addressing military and security issues – the very pressures now reshaping Arctic shipping.

The council went dormant for over a year starting in 2022 after Russia, then the Arctic Council president, invaded Ukraine. While meetings and projects involving the remaining countries have since resumed, the council’s influence has been undercut by unilateral moves by the Trump administration and Russia, and bilateral arrangements between countries, including Russia and China, often involving access to oil, gas and critical mineral deposits.

In this context, Arctic countries can strengthen cooperation through other channels. An important one is science.

For decades, scientists from the U.S., Europe, Russia and other countries collaborated on research related to public safety and the environment, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted those research networks.

Going forward, countries could share more data on ice thaw, extreme weather and emergency response to help prevent accidents in a rapidly opening shipping corridor.

Critical minerals: Control over the seabed

The global transition to clean energy is driving demand for critical minerals, such as nickel, cobalt, manganese and rare earth elements, that are essential for everything from smartphones and batteries to fighter jets. Some of the world’s largest untapped deposits lie deep below the ocean’s surface, in places like the Clarion-Clipperton Zone near Hawaii in the Pacific. This has sparked interest from governments and corporations in sea floor mining.

Harvesting critical minerals from the seabed could help meet demand at a time when China controls much of the global critical mineral supply. But deep-sea ecosystems are poorly understood, and disruptions from mining would have unknown consequences for ocean health. Forty countries now support either a ban or a pause on deep sea mining until the risks are better understood.

These concerns sit alongside geopolitical tensions: Most deep-sea minerals lie in international waters, where competition over access and profits could become another front in global rivalry.

The International Seabed Authority was created under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to manage seabed resources, but its efforts to establish binding mining rules have stalled. The U.S. never ratified the convention, and the Trump administration is now trying to fast-track its own permits to circumvent the international process and accelerate deep-sea mining in areas that are outside national jurisdictions.

Against this backdrop, a loose coalition of issue-focused groups and companies have joined national governments in calling for a pause on deep-sea mining. At the same time, some insurers have declined to insure deep-sea mining projects.

Pressure from outside groups will not eliminate competition over seabed resources, but it can shape behavior by raising the costs of moving too quickly without carefully evaluating the risks. For example, Norway recently paused deep-sea mining licenses until 2029, while BMW, Volvo and Google have pledged not to purchase metals produced from deep-sea mines until environmental risks are better understood.

Overfishing: When competition outruns cooperation

Fishing fleets have been ranging farther and fishing longer in recent decades, leading to overfishing in many areas. For coastal communities, the result can crash fish stocks, threatening jobs in fishing and processing and degrading marine ecosystems, which makes coastal areas less attractive for tourism and recreation. When stocks decline, seafood prices also rise.

Unlike deep-sea mining or Arctic shipping, overfishing is prompting cooperation on many levels.

In 2025, a critical mass of countries ratified the High Seas Treaty, which sets out a legal framework for creating marine protected areas in international waters that could give species a chance to recover. Meanwhile, several countries have arrangements with their neighbors to manage fishing together.

For example, the European Union and U.K. are finalizing an agreement to set quotas for fleets operating in waters where fish stocks are shared. Likewise, Norway and Russia have established annual quotas for the Barents Sea to try to limit overfishing. These government-led efforts are reinforced by other forms of diplomacy that operate outside government.

Market-based initiatives like the Marine Stewardship Council certification set common sustainability standards for fishing companies to meet. Many major retailers look for that certification when making purchases. Websites like Global Fishing Watch monitor fishing activity in near real time, giving governments and advocacy groups data for action.

Collectively, these efforts make it harder for illegal fishing to hide.

How well countries are able to work together to update quotas, share data and enforce rules as warming oceans shift where fish stocks are found and demand continues to grow will determine whether overfishing can be stopped.

Looking Ahead

At a time when international cooperation is under strain, agreements between countries and pressure from companies, insurers and issue-focused groups are essential for ensuring a healthy ocean for the future.

Jonas Gamso, Associate Professor and Deputy Dean of Knowledge Enterprise for the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University and Hossain Ahmed Taufiq, Postdoctoral Fellow of Ocean Diplomacy and Leadership, Arizona State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.