UK Rivers Network: Setting up the UK Rivers Network

You are here: Home page [index.html] > About us > Setting up the UK Rivers Network Home page | About us | Network | Campaigns | News | Education | Contact us Setting up the UK Rivers Network Last updated: June 17, 2001. Setting up the UK Rivers Network This document outlines our suggested plan for setting up the "UK Rivers Network": it looks at why we need to do it, how we're going to do it, how the network will be structured, and how it will operate. Your help please! We know many groups and individuals have been working on river protection, conservation, and restoration for years and we are very keen to learn from their experiences. We're not interested in re-inventing wheels. We want to make the network as effective as possible by importing best practices from community groups and river alliances around the world. This is a draft document and your comments or suggestions would not only be very welcome, but invaluable in helping us to get the network off the ground. Executive Summary The basic idea of our project is to establish a loosely linked network of groups and individuals interested in empowering communities to improve their local inland waterways and, more generally, raising the profile of river-environment issues across the whole of the UK and Ireland . Our vision for protecting "living rivers" involves a combination of "positive" community and educational work to encourage grassroots river projects across the UK and Ireland and "negative" campaigning work to fight developments or policies that will damage or degrade inland waterways. We intend to establish a political/campaigning group (the UK Rivers Network) to carry out policy work, campaigning, and networking; and an associated charity ([CHARITY]) to carry out educational and community activities. The UKRN would aim to be the public's voice on river issues, articulating the concerns of ordinary people and local community groups and attempting to ensure that national government agencies, such as the Environment Agency and the Scottish EPA (SEPA), meet the public's expectations of its environmental watchdogs. It would aim to be provide an alternative, authoritative voice on river issues, working in partnership with the national government agencies (and other bodies such as the European Commission Environment Directorate) as much as possible, but quite willing to challenge them whenever necessary. [CHARITY] would take a very proactive approach in trying to establish community groups; we will not simply be waiting for interested groups to come to us--we will do our best to kick-start community projects, encouraging "do-it-yourself" community groups and "adopt-a-river" initiatives in areas we feel could most benefit from them. As a charity, [CHARITY] would work within the Charity Commission's guidelines on political and campaigning activities. The two groups will work in partnership with organizations such as the Environment Agency, SEPA, the Irish EPA, International Rivers Network, European Rivers Network, and numerous community and environmental groups across the British Isles. In the long term, we would like to be in the position where we can stop inappropriate river developments and long-term deterioration of inland waterways not through hastily organized anti-development campaigns or protests, but because of a well-established, positive culture of community river protection. Currently, the UKRN operates as a loose collective of campaigners. It is a constituted organization with a bank account, but it has no central office, no permanent staff, and no regular income; we are in the process of applying to the Charity Commission to register [CHARITY] as a charity. We have the greatest respect for the huge efforts many community groups and individuals have made in protecting and restoring our inland waters. We intend to tread carefully and be sensitive to the many years of work already done by other people in this field. We have no wish or need to duplicate work that other groups are doing. Background: why we need a UK Rivers Network For a little over three years now, a number of environmental activists and campaign groups have been talking about setting up a "UK Rivers Network"—a loosely linked network of groups and individuals interested in empowering communities to improve their local inland waterways and, more generally, raising the profile of river-environment issues across the whole of the UK and Ireland . The idea of a "UK rivers network" was originally floated in 1997 by Dr. Phil Williams, founder and former president of the San-Francisco-based International Rivers Network, during the successful campaign to stop the diversion of the rivers Teign and Bovey in Devon. In Autumn 2000, we finally decided to set up the UK Rivers Network and sent representatives to the European Rivers Network "Think Camp"/NGO summit in the Loire valley to meet and learn from river groups as far afield as the Kazhak Republic, Russia, Thailand, and the United States. There are now river networks and alliances in many countries and a high proportion of these devote much of their time to fighting dams. In the UK, dams are not such an issue; there are, nevertheless, major problems facing our inland waters (such as floodplain loss, cumulative pollution and degradation of the riverine environment, use of artificial methods rather than natural flood defence, increasing pressure on our coastal regions, and too few designated inland "bathing waters" of a guaranteed minimum quality)--problems a UK rivers network will help to address. The Problem: UK rivers under threat "Half of Europe's freshwater wildlife habitat has been destroyed over the last 50 years, according to a new report by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The United Kingdom is no exception, with most of its rivers and streams severely degraded and no longer able to support significant wildlife. Only 15 per cent of the UK's 150,000 miles of freshwater channels remain in a "natural condition", according to WWF's Living Rivers report, with the remainder dredged and culverted into drainage ditches, straightened and canalised for navigation, or constrained by hard, lifeless banks. Only one acre in 40 of the flood-plain wetlands that once spread over our river valleys has survived centuries of drainage for intensive farming and urban development. One in three UK rivers is colonised by alien plants, and pollution is widespread, from sewage works and factories and poor agricultural practice." Oliver Tickell, The Independent, October 1999. The solution: The UK Rivers Network and [CHARITY]? Our vision for protecting what Phil Williams describes as "living rivers" involves a combination of "positive" community and educational work to encourage grassroots river projects across the UK and Ireland and "negative" campaigning work to fight developments or policies that will damage or degrade inland waterways. Policy, campaigning, and networking Two recent environmental campaigns have highlighted the need for a rivers network here in the UK: the unsuccessful campaign to stop the Newbury Bypass in Berkshire, where the Lambourn and Kennet river valleys have been permanently damaged by road embankments the size of city walls and poorly designed river crossings, and the successful campaign to stop the relocation of the rivers Teign and Bovey at Teigngrace in Devon for the expansion of a massive clay quarry. Both campaigns provided major opportunities to raise the profile of river issues. In both cases, loose networks of river-minded groups and individuals were hurriedly assembled to counter the threats to the rivers. Although both campaigns became national (and, in the case of Newbury, international) issues, neither successfully raised the profile of systematic and longer-term threats to the UK's rivers. For this reason, the issues raised in both cases are unlikely to stop similar threats to other rivers elsewhere in the UK. For example, new road schemes proposed for Salisbury (defeated by a campaign of concerted community action that lasted through much of the 1990s, but recently resurrected) would include highly damaging river crossings with the same problems as the river crossings built into the Newbury bypass. The UK Rivers Network could respond to problems such as these with a combination of campaigning, policy, and networking activities. We have already assisted several local campaign groups in this way. For example, we were members of the Hastings Alliance--a national alliance of groups who fought a successful campaign against the Hastings bypasses. Educational and community activities "Campaigning against the negative" is only one part of the UKRN project. An equally important part is promoting positive action for river protection, restoration, and regeneration, particularly through community initiatives. In the United States, there is a notable culture of community involvement in river protection. Throughout the country, community groups, councils, and voluntary bodies work together on river improvement projects. One of the UKRN's major objectives will be to try to promote similar schemes in the UK—to get ordinary people involved in protecting rivers as a community resource rather than leaving that responsibility to the Environment Agency, English Nature, or simply just to fate. Community organizations and alliances in parts of the US operate "adopt-a-river" or "adopt-a-stream" campaigns, or indeed, adopt entire watersheds, and we will explore whether similar initiatives could work here in the UK. We would like to be in the position where we can stop inappropriate river developments and long-term deterioration not through hastily organized anti-development projects or protests, but because of a well-established, positive culture of community river protection in the UK. There are already signs that this may be happening: Some UK/Irish rivers are already lucky enough to have local community groups and alliances dedicated to their protection, restoration, and preservation. Some of these organizations, such as the Mersey Basin Organization, have developed internationally recognized community/business partnerships. Most of these groups necessarily concentrate on very small geographical areas--indeed, limited resources and the "local" nature of their charitable aims prevent them doing anything else. One of our main aims is to improve communications between the various active groups around the British Isles and to use the good ideas they have developed as models to help establish many more, similar groups in areas that are not currently protected. It is our intention to take a very proactive approach in trying to establish community groups; we will not simply be waiting for interested groups to come to us--we will do our best to kick-start community groups in areas we feel could most benefit from them. At Newbury, a group of community-minded residents, local businesses, and environmental groups (including the Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Wildlife Trust) launched their own expensive Newbury Bypass Monitoring Project to assess runoff pollution caused by the road, ultimately sponsoring a Ph.D. student to conduct a major scientific study with financial help from corporate donors such as Sainsbury's. This internationally important, "bottom-up", grassroots initiative is just the kind of community action the UK Rivers Network would seek to promote. The Streamwatch UK project organized by Manchester Metropolitan University, the Wildlife Trusts, and various other organizations is another good example. Here, primary and secondary schools (and community groups) sample river quality with professional equipment to build up a national water quality database accessible over the Web. Two organizations This "double-headed" vision is a traditional model for campaigning, environmental NGOs in the UK, which often operate as combined charities (to carry out community/educational activities) with associated but separate limited companies (to carry out more overtly political activities that are incompatible with having charitable status). Thus, Friends of the Earth operates as a partnership between Friends of the Earth Trust and Friends of the Earth Ltd; Surfers Against Sewage is a partnership between the Clean Water Initiative and a separate campaigning company called Surfers Against Sewage Ltd. We have already informally discussed how the UKRN should be constituted with Earthrights Solicitors and we are likely to follow the classic "two-headed" NGO model of company limited by guarantee and registered charity. The limited company will pursue our political work; the charity will promote educational and community projects. We will also need to identify a board of directors (for the limited company) and a group of trustees (for the registered charity). We will select these people very carefully to provide a broad, well-informed advisory group collectively knowledgeable on river issues, effective campaigning, and the management of environmental groups. We need to strike a balance between providing effective long-term guidance for the people responsible for the day-to-day running of the organization and not getting bogged down in committee inefficiency or personality politics. For clarity and to ensure that we comply strictly with the requirements of the Charities Commission, we will follow the traditional approach and pursue our project with two affiliated organizations. We have already established a campaigning organization, the UK Rivers Network, a properly constituted group with nominated officers and a bank account; we intend to convert this into a limited company in due course. We will also establish an affiliated charity called [CHARITY] to pursue educational and community activities. Together, these two organizations will be able to combine long-term work on community and educational projects with joint approaches to political lobbying and short-term, rapid responses to particular development threats. But they will be completely separate organizations and their activities will be quite different . The importance of community participation From the European Commission to the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century, international organizations have repeatedly highlighted the need for greater community involvement in protecting freshwater resources: WWF's Freshwater Programme: "NGOs have an important role to play: lobbying, raising awareness of the value of rivers and floodplains, promoting best-practice projects which show river and floodplain management and restoration in action, facilitating the development of less-damaging alternative approaches (to flood management for instance) and establishing networks of protected areas." European Commission: "...getting the citizen involved more closely...", "The review highlighted the ongoing successes in the implementation of DWSS projects at the grassroots level, and how these are bringing about genuine community empowerment through the development of feelings of ownership and responsibility." "encouraging changes in social behaviour by engaging all the actors concerned (public authorities, citizens, consumers, enterprises, etc.)" (5th Action Programme) "A new European Water Policy will have to get polluted waters clean again, and ensure clean waters are kept clean. In achieving these objectives, the roles of citizens and citizens' groups will be crucial. This is why a new European Water Policy has to get citizens more involved."(Proposals for Water Framework Directive) World Commission on Water for the 21st Century: "The old model of 'this is government's business' must be replaced by a model in which stakeholders -- those who use water -- participate at all levels... At the local level, community groups and users' associations have a major role - sometimes in self-providing and managing their local sewerage or irrigation works, sometimes in monitoring the performance of public and private service providers, sometimes in managing land use in their local watershed. At higher levels, the Commission calls for "users' parliaments" in which water users would have a major role together with the national government in managing aquifers and river basins. "Experience shows that this participation must be real and not symbolic and shows that these users' associations and parliaments must have a decisive role in deciding what is done, how it is done, and who pays for it," Mr. Serageldin says. "Experience also shows that what works is partnerships between governments and stakeholders, with governments playing a vital role in creating the enabling environment, and in providing technical and enforcement support. Empowering women's groups, the poor, youth and the community-based groups to have an adequate voice in the participatory decision making is a necessary pillar of this approach." Working with other groups Government river organizations The relationship between our groups and government river protection organizations (such as the Environment Agency, SEPA, and the Irish EPA) is something we need to consider in detail. Taken together, the Environment Agency, SEPA, and the Irish EPA and its Northern Irish counterparts are already a "UK rivers network." But these government bodies necessarily operate in a political climate; they are not as free to challenge government policy as some of their staff, environmental NGOs, and members of the public perhaps might like them to do. Nor are they campaign groups or organizations particularly noted for their ability to communicate river issues to ordinary members of the public. Finally, there is often a conflict between different aspects of their remit: for example, as the statutory body responsible for flood defence, the Environment Agency (England and Wales) often prioritizes flood protection over environmental protection—not least because of community pressure to reduce flooding—and this particular problem is bound to worsen as the impacts of climate change become more severe. (The use of diesel pumps on the Somerset Levels is a good example of a conflict of this type.) There are also conflicts between, for example, recreational water use and protecting biodiversity, (but that problem is not unique to river management—it also affects, for example, how English Nature and private landowners, such as the National Trust, manage SSSIs). Where developments affecting rivers are concerned (such as new motorways), bodies such as the Environment Agency may be able to object only on very narrowly defined grounds, such as increased flood risk; without increased flood risk, it may be unable to object effectively. These drawbacks, which stem largely from organizational difficulties, contribute to a public perception of "inaction"—of statutory watchdogs being "toothless watchdogs". But effective advocacy is very much where the UK Rivers Network comes in; we could help community groups to articulate their objections effectively and provide an authoritative voice against controversial, river-damaging developments when the government river-protection bodies are unable (or unwilling, for whatever reason) to do so. To summarize, the UKRN would aim to be the public's voice on river issues, articulating the concerns of ordinary people and local community groups and attempting to ensure that national government agencies (such as the Environment Agency and SEPA) meet the public's expectations of its environmental watchdogs. It would aim to be provide an alternative, authoritative voice on river issues, working in partnership with the Environment Agency as much as possible, but quite willing to challenge the Environment Agency, the DETR, the European Commission, or other government bodies whenever necessary. As a charity, [CHARITY] would not be directly involved in policy and campaigning work. But it will need to work closely and cooperatively with a variety of organizations, including the Environment Agency, the Wildlife Trusts, local councils, and local community groups. The UKRN, the IRN, and the ERN The IRN and the ERN were one of our main sources of inspiration for the UKRN. In our first year of operation, we have supported and promoted a number of IRN's international campaigns in countries such as India, Thailand, China, and Turkey… and we will continue to do this. Neveretheless, there will be no formal relationship with either IRN or ERN; we will be an entirely autonomous organization. This reflects not just the our need to campaign in a dynamic and effective way, but also the differences between river threats in the UK and elsewhere. The UK Rivers Network and other groups As "new kids on the block", we're very much aware that we could upset or offend a lot of people by setting up something with a name like the UK Rivers Network or claiming to be the voice on UK river issues. We are very keenly aware that this "campaign territory" is already occupied by numerous other river groups, angling groups, fish conservation groups… and by the national government river agencies. We have the greatest respect for the huge efforts these groups have made. We intend to tread carefully and be sensitive to the many years of work already done by other people in this field. We have no wish or need to duplicate work that other groups are doing; we have neither the time nor the resources to do that. Structure, staffing, and funding Currently, the UKRN operates as a loose collective of campaigners. It has no central office, no permanent staff, and no regular income. Our experience up to now has been of running large and effective campaigns on shoestring budgets. By using voluntary campaigners willing to absorb their own expenses (at least for the time being), we have no costs and no overheads. That is not to suggest that we don't want to spend money (or raise funds), simply that, initially, we need to keep costs tightly under control until we have identified a guaranteed source of income. We are under no illusions about the scale of the UKRN project and the structure of the network will be a particularly important way of managing the workload. We have discussed operating as a real network—a loose collection of individuals who meet irregularly, make decisions by consensus, and have no formal structure, office, or central coordination. However, we can't see that kind of organization being dynamic or effective enough to promote the kind of projects we have in mind. The alternative would be to operate as a small campaign group, ultimately becoming a fully fledged NGO, possibly using regional campaigners or representatives if we can find them (i.e. quite similar in some respects to the parallel national/local structure of an organization like FoE, which allows its local campaign groups almost complete autonomy). Although this raises other problems, notably staffing, funding, and the possibility that the UKRN could be dominated by (and over-dependent on) particular individuals, it is our preferred option—it's the only way we believe we can drive the project forward quickly and effectively. We will initially rely on a network of voluntary campaigners to promote particular projects. We hope these people will communicate by email (or email group/forum) and we will use our website as a central information point. The long-term aim must be to find people who are willing to apply themselves wholeheartedly to the UKRN project and to pay them properly so they can devote all their time to it. What would the groups actually do? Our two groups would have some objectives in common, as well as objectives of their own: Common objectives Raising the national profile (public and political) of river conservation issues in their own right (and not as secondary parts of other campaigns). Campaigning is all about communication and public education is one of our highest priorities. Helping to communicate river issues (and the connections between them) to members of the public. For example, the connection between loss of floodplain to inappropriate greenfield housing schemes and increased flood risk and the connection between climate change and increased severity and frequency of flood events. Shifting the mindset of river activism from "defending against the negative" to "protecting the positive". For example, using rivers as the focus of environmental education activities in a local community or using a river that has successfully been defended against a development threat as an educational, recreational, or sustainable tourism resource. Highlighting threats/problems with groundwater as well as surface waters. Objectives of the UKRN In summary, these are the UKRN's objectives: Policy work: Helping to formulate policies and legislation on riverine issues. This includes reviewing and contributing to consultations and attempting to influence legislation (both UK and European) in draft form. Campaigning: Protecting, conserving, and defending rivers from various kinds of threats (e.g. developments of various kinds, pollution, etc.). Supporting community groups and protests involved in this kind of campaign. Networking: Forging links between river groups and individuals across the UK and Ireland. Acting as a UK contact for international campaigns that concern the UK people or its government (such as the Ilisu dam). The UKRN could interest itself in any aspect of the riverine environment, including ecological protection, conflicts between recreational use and ecological protection, water quality issues, flood defence, impacts of climate change, implications of legislative changes (e.g. adoption of Water Framework Directive, revision of Bathing Water Directive), promoting river regeneration projects, halting river diversions, and so on. Objectives of [CHARITY] Community action: Promoting grassroots, community-centred projects for river restoration and regeneration. Helping local communities to "Adopt-a-river". Community networking: Getting together with other groups and individuals to share experiences, expertise, and support, and cooperate on joint projects. For example, if some kind of large-scale joint legal action were needed, some or all of our member groups might work together to fund it. Awareness raising: Helping to communicate information of mutual interest between member groups and to the wider community. Educational work: Developing educational materials, responding to emails from students, and continuing to expand the educational content of our popular website ( http://www.ukrivers.net/ ), which now serves up to 3000 pages a week. As [CHARITY] is designed to become a charity at the earliest possible opportunity, it will operate entirely within the guidelines set out by the Charities Commission including those governing political and campaigning activities. It will also operate entirely according to its own charitable aims/objects and these, when fully drafted, will govern its activities and objectives. Your thoughts please! We'd very much welcome your thoughts and ideas on what we're proposing—in particular, ideas for helping us structure the workload in such a way that we can achieve things quickly and effectively without getting bogged down in the sheer scale of the project. We would, naturally, also appreciate volunteers for any of the jobs identified here. You can email thoughts and suggestions to us at the usual address . Home page | About us | Network | Campaigns | News | Education | Contact us