Rivers Trust Conference

The last 2 days I have attended the online Rivers Trust Conference – ‘Water at the heart of climate resilience’. Loads of interesting information was shared, and I’ve tried to collate a summary of all the panel discussion sessions, and projects and schemes which were presented!

Day 1:

Laurence Couldrick (Westcounty Rivers Trust) opened the conference mentioning how we are all aware of the changing climate and it’s impacts on the environment such as warmer temperatures, rising sea levels, and more frequent extreme events of rainfall and hotter weather spells.

Catchment characteristics have changed including changing drainage patterns, more compaction of soils and more input of nitrates. Due to this, water doesn’t infiltrate as frequently or quickly, and runs off the land. This means the water is not available locally to top up basewater levels, impacting the watercourse at a catchment-scale.

We are also experiencing reduced catchment and community resilience, including pollution events, fish kills, flooding locally and sediment/soil input causing us to dredge our rivers more frequently.

When we think about indicators and impact we should think about what species suffer, and what this indicates in terms of environmental condition. The eel is a remarkable species in terms of what activities it carries out throughout growth to its adult stage. It can be impacted by changes such as changing gulf stream patterns which alter the larval stage and recruitment in the catchment; sea level habitat squeeze which impacts availability of suitable habitat; changes in river flow and base levels; reduced and degraded habitat; barriers to migration both for those incoming to feed and moving downstream to feed; pollution of river water; changes in elver trading (i.e. Brexit and altering trade deals); and potential encouragement of illegal trading.

Laurence outlined 2 main questions to consider throughout the conference:

  1. How do we increase the impact of our work beyond the project?
  2. How do we continue to fund cross border collaboration?

My initial thoughts were the importance of communicating outcomes/results, sharing lessons learnt, and advocating best-practice. We should continue to encourage joined up collaboration of river restoration projects, working at catchment scale.

The first speaker of the session was Diego Intrigliolo, Spanish National Research Council. Diego presented on the Triple-C project which focuses on capitalising climate change projects in risk management for improved resilience. Climate change is impacting our ecosystems and societies. Practices to adapt to climate change effects are required with special focus on Nature-based Solutions (NbS).

The Triple-C Project focuses on capitalising on successful EU projects which aim to prevent and manage risks deriving from climate change. It aims to provide future EU programmes with guidelines and recommendations to implement and support projects. 254 EU projects have been screened and studied, to extract a catalogue for good practices, replicability of knowledge transfer, policy implications and social dimensions. There is a Triple-C Platform where all project information is logged.

The first Keynote presentation was from Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England. Tony stressed how fundamentally, the accumulation of carbon in our atmosphere has a critical impact on our Earth. Less carbon is being locked in the ground and in ecosystems, contributing to the rising average temperature of our planet. This has a knock on effect of ecosystem damage, impacting the water and carbon cycles. Changes in vegetation such as deforestation can contribute to drought and climate change with tonnes of carbon released into the atmosphere.

Tony also mentioned how the degradation of peatlands in Britain is a major priority for Natural England. These systems are highly degraded, shedding carbon into the atmosphere. Restoration of ecosystems such as coasts, wetlands and peatlands can help us build resilience, and learn to withstand and recover from ‘shocks’. Nature-based solutions (NbS) can help rebuild the health of ecosystems, as well as improve resilience to help limit the initial impacts of detrimental events. We need more, larger, better quality natural areas, connected to each other in synergy. For example, the establishment of more riparian woodlands and re-naturalising of river valleys can bring multiple benefits - carbon capture, habitat and hydrology, recreation and community access.

Nature doesn’t divide over counties or national boundaries. We need to work more with the flow of nature and fundamentals of how our environment works. We need to line up all the pieces of the puzzle to identify how we can build towards more resilient water resources in the context of climate change volatility.

 

Protecting water resources

Following the keynote, three talks were given on EU projects looking at issue of climate change resilience and protecting water resources.

Jan Staes, Senior Researcher at University of Antwerp presented on landscape scale actions to protect raw water sources. The main objective is to build resilience against drought by enhancing water infiltration and retention capacity of landscapes in regions of strategic importance for drinking water production.

With wetter winters and much drier summmer months, weather patterns are expected to become more erratic. During the dry season we consume more water while there is less replenishment. Groundwater levels are critically flow and watercourses have barely any baseflow. Contrastingly there will be a lot of critisim if water saving measures are implemetned unnecesarily. There is a looming conflict between water provision and biodiversity.

The only feasible and cost effective solution is to increase recharge. Then we will have a better chance of surving dry periods, but we need to change how we monitor the water system. Over many centuries landscapes have been designed to drain water more quickly, driving the critical impacts of floods and droughts. Options to restore landscapes include soil management practices, increasing water storage in landscape depressions, and temporary wetland creation.

Secondly, Jessie Leach, Project Officer for the Rivers Trust and Norfolk Rivers Trust, presented on the ‘Water for Tomorrow’ project. This drought-related project focuses on water deficits and how they are shared across agriculture, water companies, public water supply, industries, and the environment. The current frameworks are insufficient to address the demand and supply mismatch, and we face uncertainties and challenges with climate change and population growth.

Jessie offered a solution to this, involving developing new adaptation strategies to facilitate sustainable management of water resources. We need improved planning to address shared water deficiencies, and should adapt our way of working using innovative tools and processes. This project is piloted in East Anglia, England, as well as catchments in France. The outcomes hope to provide improved insight, visibility and decision making about shared water resources use, stressing the importance of collaboration. This is a brilliant opportunity to share knowledge between England and France, learn more about government structures, sharing tools and data processes and seeing how this helps us make decisions collaboratively.

The third speaker of this session on protecting water resources was Lisa Stewart, Project Officer at Rivers Trust in Ireland. Lisa presented on the ‘Source to tap’ project, linking Ireland and Northern Ireland. This cross-border project aims to protect and improve the rivers and lakes within the Derg and Erne catchments. This involves exploring sustainable, cost effective measures to reduce pollution in shared catchments, to secure safe drinking water sources and contribute to improvements in cross border raw water quality.

The project includes a citizen science water quality monitoring programme to encourage local community engagement. There is also an education programme involving visiting schools to spread awareness of the water cycle, working with community groups to share the message of the project, and visiting farmers to demonstrate the benefits of sustainable alternatives such as fertilisers. A pilot Land Incentive Scheme (LIS) was also trialled along the River Derg aiming to help farmers make small changes to their practices to make farms more sustainable and help water resources. This includes reducing flow across farmland, protection of watercourse from stock, peatland management and other farmland innovations suggested by the land owner. Lisa shared how over 200 farms in the pilot catchments had been involved, identifying over 800 issues to be resolved.

Holding back water

The second session of Day 1 was another 4 presentations on initiatives to store water.

Stephen Dury, Senior Officer for Water and Environment at Somerset County Council presented on the Climate resilient community based catchment planning and management (Triple C) Interreg Project. Stephen stressed how the complex nature of climate change and its associated water related effects require a catchment based collaborative approach.

This project aims to develop large-scale climate-resilient strategies for land and water management. The pilot catchment stretch across Europe, and implement techniques such as sediment traps and fences to reduce sediment loss and flood risk locally whilst improving water quality. In Devon they have been investigating how wetlands can help benefit flood risk reduction efforts and water storage. In Belgium, leaky ponds have been created with capacity of 30,000m3. In Holland, they are working towards slowing water runoff in arable fields. In Somerset, leaky bunds and dams have been installed to retain water. This is part of the wider Hills to Levels project to slow the flow and reduce flooding and soil erosion, which won the 2018 UK River Prize.

Secondly, Tom Smart, Natural England presented the Natural Course Ecological Network Tool (Cheshire to South Lancashire). This 10-year EU LIFE funded project was a collaboration between Environment Agency, Natural England, United Utilites and Rivers Trust. The project aimed to improve the water environment, and provide a tool to map ecological networks to lowland woodland habitats. This aimed to identify where there were opportunities to improve NbS and flood risk reduction.

Species are likely to ‘range-shift’ in response to climate change. We need to understand where the existing habitat networks are likely to facilitate this and improve them. We need to determine where the networks should and could be for species trying to move across the landscape. We should consider where there are suitable conditions and where we could make them bigger/enhance them. Multiple modelling approaches were used to answer these queries on where species would/should/could disperse across the landscape.

As well as this, Tom mentioned the multiple benefits for biodiversity, WFD and flood risk mitigation. Using WFD data, the project considered where lowland wetland restoration could also improve water pollution or where woodland could also be added. This allows the project to target areas for rewetting, blue-green infrastrusure, SuDs schemes or restoration and enhancement.

Tom also mentioned the model limitations. It only defines zones to consider. A model is only ever as reliable as the input data, so ground truth is vital. Distinct ‘zones’ are unlike real world ecology which will work along gradients rather than sharp boundaries. However, this output can help inform decision making.

The third speaker of this session was Barry Bendall from Rivers Trust. Barry presented the Water Co-Governance for sustainable ecosystems (WaterCoG) project focusing on governance in water management. There is a disconnect between top-down targets and mechanisms for bottom-up community led action.

A common challenge is enabling the right governance frameworks for effective implementation. This project aimed to generate ‘long-term sustainable management of North Sea ecosystems’, involving 9 partners from 5 countries including Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, and Germany. Working with stakeholders, the project aims to develop a shared understanding of groundwater resources, and bridge the gaps in understanding of climate adaptation. Barry stressed some key tips including enabling citizen action, access to data and knowledge, identifying the win-wins, reviewing and adapting reguarly, and ensuring you find time to celebrate results

The final speaker of this session was Mike Müller-Petke, Head of the Geoelectric and Electromagnetic Department at Leibniz University in Hannover. Mike presented on the TOPSOIL project, the influence of geology on the landscape, and the connecton between soil and groundwater. This was an extensitve collaboration project with 24 partners operating over 16 pilot sites in the North Sea region (including the UK, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Germany).

There are 5 main challenges of topsoil – flooding; saltwater intrusion; the need for a groundwater buffer to store water in periods of excess rainfall (resilience to low rainfall); better knowledge on soil conditions; and capacity to break down nutrients and pollutants in the uppermost layers of the ground. Mike talked about how we can tackle these challenges by developing tools to map and model the topsoil layer, and implementing solutions at field scale.

As well as this, Mike stressed how we can add value from transnational and cross sectoral cooperation. It’s important to learn from each others experiences and different backgrounds, combining knowledge to gain a better solution to our shared problems.

 

Following these captivating presentations, the presenters were asked a couple of questions from the audience.

Do governments understand NbS?

Governments are increasingly getting on board, spreading the message and stressing the importance of working with natural processes, so we are moving in the right direction, although there are a couple barriers to implementation. From decades of poor management (hard engineering), there is an appetite to move to more NbS but there are still barriers on regulatory and institutional side. There is a key role for NGOs to be progressive in advocacy work.

Why do we need to take land out of agricultural production in order to encourage NFM?

Depends what we mean by productive management. We need appropriate management which is resilient, not just dependent on expensive heavily engineered protection.

 

Day 2:

Keynote speaker Liv Garfield, Chief Executive of Severn Trent kicked off the 2nd day of the Conference mentioning how rivers play a role in all our lives. The Covid-19 pandemic has raised the importance of rivers and the huge recreational benefits. Riverscapes should be central to the future of every situation.

Only 14% of rivers in the UK are achieving good status. Liv pointed out that the main cause is agriculture and we need to work actively to try and alleviate this. She mentioned how she works with farmers to encourage use of less harmful pesticides and location of chemical stores.

The pandemic has hit us all in different ways, but we now have the opportunity for green recovery – grow back better and greener. NbS are a massive opportunity for nature recovery in the future. We should encourage companies to make commitments towards carbon neutrality, as this will have the knock on effect of more investment in biodiversity and NbS.

The last 12 months have seen lower carbon emissions and nature benefits. Liv outlined how Severn Trent plan on playing their part in growing back greener through a Green Recovery scheme, which will create jobs in the environment sector as well!

  • 2 stretches of river designated for bathing quality, attracting a destination for tourism (Ludlow and River Avon)
  • Treat more drinking water for the long term in a carbon neutral manner
  • Properly considered SuDS for urban drainage – incentivise local community to make their driveways permeable and have water butts, as well as making streets greener

Liv finished by mentioning how the Covid-19 pandemic has provided an opportunity to think about investment in a different way. We need to think about how we can influence government and peoples behaviours. Liv’s thought-provoking presentation was a brilliant way to start this second day of presentations and discussions.

 

Abundance and scarcity: climate-related water challenges

The first session of Day 2 focused on climatic water challenges. Dave Rumble & Mike Blackmore (Wessex Rivers Trust) presented the Flow Resilient Sustainable Habitat (FReSH Water) Programme. The project focuses on the Rivers Test & Itchen which currently incur flow licence restrictions to help improve resilience of rivers in times of drought. These rivers are of economic importance for game fishery and salmon spawning and there is a limited window for river restoration works to be carried out.

Mike mentioned how the River Test is a drought disaster waiting to happen! It only takes a small increase in temperature or decrease in flow for it to be an unattractive area for fish/salmonids. In its current condition the Test is an easy access site for Flyfishing. It holds a large number of domesticated stock trout, and practically guarantees catches. From some conceptual sums, the Test can be worth up to £43, 368 per km per year. If restoration were to take place, resulting in a loss of fishable areas, there would also be a loss of income.

   
 

To initiate the project, Mike & Dave wanted to gauge the interests, concerns and aspirations for the river from the local community, to ensure stakeholder engagement throughout the project. Site visits were carried out and rough restoration ideas were designed. These were finalised and shared with landowners along with a guide to techniques to give more information about what techniques would look like, and to ensure landowners felt they had sufficient input. The drawings were saved on a GIS map, showing highlighted areas, metrics and outline designs. This is a brilliant concept for stakeholder engagement and sharing design ideas with all involved parties.

The next talk was from Dave Johnson, Technical Director of the Rivers Trust. Dave presented the Natural Flood Management (NFM) dashboard, a tool which shows all the NFM assets across the country. This is a national asset database which can be used by policy makers and investors.

This helps the Rivers Trust determine an accurate picture of what has been achieved. So far the database is providing some useful initial information about the costs of implementing NFM, the barriers to NFM delivery and how effective the assets are. Future developments for this database include valuing of assets and assessing the importance of maintaining the natural assets.

What about recording other assets?

The database shows where we are not taking up the opportunities for restoration, where we should be. This can help us better balance the spread of different types of projects. We need to try and value natural solutions as much as possible, and ensure accurate monitoring is carried out to ensure the asset is maintained and providing the expected NFM benefits.

Climate resilience, the individual, and communities

The next session was about how we can help make a difference at an individual scale. There were 2 presentations before opening up to another panel discussion session.

Simmone Ahiaku, a climate campaigner and Campaigns and influencing Consultant at NUS gave a thought-provoking talk which sparked lots of interest and agreement from the audience. Simmone mentioned the climate and water crisis globally, including climate degradation, politics, conflict, how waters need human rights and the importance of water for life and death.

Future generations need to know what natural flowing water is, which is unlikely with the expected more frequent extremes, flooding, hurricanes and extended monsoon seasons. Nature has narrated our story of exploitation. Historically, waterways have been moved to make way for industry, factories, mills and quarries. The current framing of the climate and water crisis is that it is a new phenomenon, however this is neither new nor recent.

Simmone mentioned lots of examples globally, looking at climate and water crises locally, including both drinking water and water needed for agriculture, water scarcity and collaboration over borders. She also mentioned examples of health and wellbeing and the importance of having trees and water environments in your local area. Still so many people in the UK do not live close enough to green/blue spaces. This can have huge knock on impacts on physical, emotional and mental health.

Simmone finished by stressing how we must work in solidarity, and fight for climate justice collaboratively over borders.

Secondly, Julie Lawrence (Eden Rivers Trust (ERT)) presented on the Act for Eden’s Rivers community engagement project. This is an opportunity for people to join a local campaign and try and effect change. Eden Rivers Trust want to encourage everyone in the Eden Valley and Carlisle in Cumbria to make a promise to ‘Act for Eden’ to keep rivers cleaner. They aim to measure the collective impact and narrate a story about local rivers.

Julie mentioned how people sometimes don’t know where to start in terms of helping their local river. They don’t always see why rivers are directly important to them (i.e. for food, leisure, recreation). ERT decided to break the challenge of individual engagement, into bite sized chunks, and make things quick, fun, easy and no/low cost. They use digital resources to create community conversations, and encourage people power to turn individual action into collective actions.

The project asks people to promise to make small changes for 2 months. ERT provide tips and motivational emails to help them along the journey. Participants share their actions with others, and can view a tally of the total number of people signed up, and the subsequent impact of the changes in behaviour. This makes the participants feel part of something bigger, and helps continually raise awareness of locally important watercourses.

 

The next panel discussion focused on individual action alongside collective resilience. Chair Kathryn Hardcastle (Nene Valley Partnership) was joined by Julie Lawrence (ERT), Shu Liang (Day of Adaptation, Netherlands), Simon Levey (Grantham Institute, Imperial College), and Anne Mumbi (Kochi University of Technology, Japan).

Simon worked in the communications team at Imperial College, looking at purposeful communications. It’s important to consider who you want to inform about something, what you want them to learn from it/how you would like them to use it, and what is the end result you want them to get from it.

What can an individual do to help make a difference?

Give people a simple list to understand and follow steps. People don’t like to be told what to do/talked down to. Use positive, inclusive, authentic, people-focused actions and wording.

How can we sustain and encourage individual action?

Appropriate, informative communications (e.g. email). Encourage individuals to share their experiences in a project (i.e. a video) to motivate and engage others.

What are the barriers to action?

Eco-anxiety/emotional challenges. For example, Simon worked on the Climate Cares project which partnered with psychologists and psychiatrists, and surveyed to determine how climate change makes people feel. This was to stress the consideration of climate change on mental health.

Sometime too much can appear overwhelming, so it’s important to try and break up the larger challenge into smaller chunks such as smaller, easy things that individuals can approach to try and make a difference.

How do we make our actions count?

Use your voice, talk on panels, media, podcasts, MPs. Use your money wisely. Use spending power to spend on local businesses and find out about ethics of people you are spending your money with. Put your money with an organisation who use your money for good.

Collaborate and share ideas collectively. Find other individuals working towards the same campaigns and combine individual action.

Use different concepts to spread the word, for example creative art youth projects to use artwork to advocate to others how wonderful rivers are, what the issues are and how people can help.

Projects and partnerships

The final session before lunch focused on projects and partnerships.

Sarah Jenner, Strategic Catchment Planning Manager at United Utilities started the session by mentioning how most of the North West of England is supplied with drinking water from surface water. United Utilities is therefore a significant landowner in charge of 166 reservoirs. Sarah talked a bit about how United Utilities could deliver greater value for the environment, such as through NbS and adaptation for climate change, including SuDs, NFM, wetland creation and tree planting.

Sarah mentioned some of the restrictions to NbS such as strict regulatory delivery timelines; expecting the same precision from a NbS solution as a hard engineering solution; lack of long term ambition for the environment; an economic regulation framework that favours investment that delivers long-term assets over long-term commitment; requirements often set as outputs not outcomes thereby stifling the opportunity for catchment solutions, and Natural Capital markets hindered as not all parties are incentivised to address environmental impact.

In the future, we should consider cross-governmental reviews around how we plan for water environments, Water Industry Green Recovery, and the Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund.

The second speaker was Rory Callan (Environment Agency) who talked about stronger catchment focus for water resources. The 2017 Abstraction Plans set out a new ambition for managing water resources at Environment Agency and addressing unsustainable abstraction. A Catchment Focus means engagement, innovation to protect the environment, and improving access to water. We need to improve understanding of local challenges and help identify solutions for individual catchments. This will empower local groups and lead to innovation. There is also potential to achieve multiple benefits including water resource, flood risk management and water quality.

Priority catchments were selected around the country to trial innovative ways of managing water resources. These were representative of different geology and hydrology. Abstraction Licensing Strategies were set out to indicate water availability around the country and share results of priority catchment trials. Here is a link to an example from East Suffolk. Next steps aim to share the learning from the priority catchments.

The last speakers of this session were John Bolton & Martin Bowes (Anglian Water), presenting on river restoration and building resilience in chalk streams. 45 of the 161 chalk streams in England are in the Anglian Region but many are in poor condition and not protected. Ecology continues to be impacted by poor water quality, low flows due to abstraction and artificially modified rivers with unnatural river processes. One example of a solution to this is Ingoldisthorpe which is an integrated constructed wetland, providing an example of investment in catchment quality which also benefits the River Ingol chalk stream downstream.

Martin mentioned how Anglian Water are committed to supporting sustainable abstraction to prevent environmental harm, restore river function, improve habitats and support flows whilst monitoring the environmental impacts of our actions. We need to invest in major capital solution to protect the most environmentally sensitive sites in our region, including chalk streams and aquifers.

Martin & John’s next project commits to achieving river restoration across 6 catchments in the region. Approximately 250km of river restoration and enhancement work is planned, and they are in the process of establishing a river restoration framework. Collaboration with local river trusts and Catchment Partnerships is essential throughout design and delivery of the schemes.

Thriving river and land environments

The final presentation session of the conference was about river and land environments and how we can work in partnership to collaborate. Emma Rothero, Floodplain Meadows Partnership Manager at the Open University presented on how floodplains can be a useful technique for NbS. Floodplain meadows offer large flat areas suitable for growing hay. They provide grasses and flowers that thrive with drought and floods to work with nature. They offer a rich biodiversity, remove nutrients from catchments, offer low carbon agriculture and extensive grazing land. Emma suggested they are the most sustainable and productive use of a floodplain, as they absorb flood water and are naturally fertile from flood sediment.

Nearly 70% of floodplain meadows in England and Wales are under intensive use. 42% of former floodplains are no longer connected with their rivers so can not store water or nutrients. This is a shame, as these areas also store a lot of carbon. These meadows should therefore be conserved in order to boost carbon sequestration rates. The grasses which live here grow deeper with each flood event allowing them to hold more and more carbon.

Floodplain meadows are a useful technique for NFM as they reduce/delay flood peaks, slow flood wave speeds, store large quantities of surface water, enable flood water to flow back to the river later, recharge groundwater, capture and store sediments, are low maintenance, and offer multiple other benefits to agriculture production.

Emma mentioned an upcoming floodplain meadow Arts Competition, where artwork is used to portray the river hydrology (below example of a Hydrograph).

The second speakers were a partnership of Alex Adam (Water Stewardship Manager for Rivers Trust), Adrian Southern (Woodland Trust) and Richard Higgs (National Trust). Alex, Adrian and Richard presented the Trees for Water project and establishing trees across UK catchments. The project aims to plant trees that deliver benefits for water within catchments. We need to make it easier for funders, landowners and partners to plant trees and offset carbon, both at scale and pace.

This partnership shared the ambition to better join up water, carbon and nature, as well as increase capacity and capability, joining up the dots. This is tricky however the project investigated the ‘right tree in the right place’ concept and looked into appropriate locations for planting specific trees, in order to deliver multiple benefits, and drive the potential for funding and wider opportunities.

Following this was the final panel discussion session of the 2 Day conference. James Wallace (Chief Executive, Beaver Trust) chaired the session. The panel was made up of Richard Bramley (National Farmers Union), Malcom Horne (Severn Trent), Feargal Sharkey (Chair of Amwell Magna Fishery), Victoria Vyvyan (Country Land & Business Association, Vice President) & Alex Adam (Rivers Trust).

What opportunities do you see for creating space for water, biodiversity, drought and flood alleviation?

The scale of this opportunity is huge. Landowners are critical so will require relevant compensation. We need to set the scale of the vision. We need to better manage our catchments and make changes to help both flooding and drought. We need to think about environmental management in the long-term. We have seen increasing pressures put on catchments dramatically over the last 40-50 years. We need cooperation and ambition. The better we look after our environment, the more resilient it will be, and the less risk there will be to supply/abstraction. We need schemes backed up by science. We need to work with farmers on best-practice and understand rivers are natural corridors between landscapes. We need systematic approaches to solving problems. We need to engage the ‘do-ers’, engage in whole catchment areas of uptake, and see the opportunities for education.

What are the benefits/challenges of using collaborative alliance?

We need to see more leadership for catchment management. We need to involve key partners at the beginning of a project. There needs to be a political role for clear vision and leadership, plus local leadership

How do we achieve a mosaic of habitats?

DEFRA agree that natural regeneration has a strong role to play. We need to map and zone across the watercourse (both banks and catchment).

How do we join up the dots to achieve full nature recovery networks?

Make sure everyone in the chain along riparian barriers doesn’t fear that this is all about enforcement and compliance (i.e. someone telling you what is wrong with your land). Ensure landowners feel there is positive collaborative action. We need to allow everyone to access the support for creating varying habitats on farmland in future schemes. Ensure there is a good relationship and recognise the impact on the tenants farm business. Encourage consistent long-term approach and vision.

What role might finance have in a rapid roll out of river buffers?

Make sure they work with the cycle of farmers and what farmers need. Differentiate between the money being input into a scheme, and the outcomes we expect to see, and make a link between the 2.

It’s not easy to bring together funds for optimum impact and reward necessary land owners. We need appropriate standards in place e.g. in terms of buffers and soil standards for carbon opportunities. We need appropriate governance to ensure funds are collated and shared with landowners accurately. We need to make sure the right investment is going to the right interventions at the right scale. There is too much focus on outputs rather than outcomes. Farmers need to know they will have a long-term report and relationship for monitoring, and won’t end up worse off as a result.

The final keynote speaker was Mark Lloyd from the Rivers Trust.

Mark closed the conference with closing remarks mentioning that we cannot continue to make plans which don’t get implemented. We cannot rely on pilot programmes, we need to think big, act fast and work together. Rivers are the front line of our action against biodiversity decline. He went on to outline that progress is being held up by 3 strategic failures – knowledge, governance and sustainable finance.

80% of environmental data cannot be accessed by people other than those that collected it. A lack of communication leads to assumptions on personal experience rather than science. Pooling multiple data of known quality, into a data platform that anyone can access is of most importance. Knowledge is power.

Catchment Partnerships are underfunded and too often excluded from planning processes. These partnerships could be the cornerstone for proper governance of our water systems. We need someone put in charge and held accountable for their decisions. Someone needs to process the information from the CaBA Monitoring Cooperative, as well as knowledge from local communities and make decisions at catchment scale to action priorities. The voices of people not usually heard in these debates, must be heard to ensure local knowledge is considered in decision making.

This three legged stool needs all 3 legs in place in order to be the platform to leap forward to the brighter future we all want.

Thanks to everyone involved in presenting and hosting this webinar. Great to hear about these projects and schemes and hear the discussions. There are a lot of projects working in partnership and collaborating with organisations globally! This shows how we can work together to achieve multiple benefits for our environment.

The Conference is available to view on YouTube.

 

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