Assessing the attitude of experts and managers of natural resources and watershed management offices of Golestan province towards legal aspects of flood management

Legal issues have special importance in flood management. The present study has investigated the most important legal issues related to floods through descriptive survey research. The study population included employees with expert positions in legal offices and heads of county natural resources offices in all counties of Golestan province who were surveyed by census method. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by the legal experts. SPSS18 software was used for data analysis. Descriptive statistics and also Sign and Wilcoxon tests were used. The results showed the effectiveness of the current legal system in preventing floods, the influence of legal sentences regarding river and stream privacy, the power of legal units to litigate violations on the floodplain of rivers and streams, as well as the effectiveness of the current structure of the legal units of the natural resources offices to deal with the causes of floods, are at a moderate level. The most important legal weakness in flood management is related to monitoring the implementation of laws. According to the respondents, non-compliance with the rules and regulations of natural resources has played a strong role in the recent floods. Respondents also believed that the degree of overlap of duties between the custodians of rivers and streams and also disagreement among the custodians regarding the floodplain area of rivers and streams is considerable. The most important solutions to reform the legal system to improve flood management include imposing severe penalties for encroaching on the floodplain area of rivers and streams and giving priority to litigation of natural resource cases. According to the results, practical suggestions and recommendations have been presented to improve flood management.