Setting up the UK Rivers Network
Discussion document: Your thoughts please!
This document outlines our suggested plan for setting up what we have provisionally called the "UK Rivers Network": it looks at why we need to do it, how we're going to do it, and how the network will operate. It's 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.This document will be revised as people make suggestions and comments.
- Background: why we need a UK Rivers Network
- Style: What kind of group would this be?
- The UKRN and the Environment Agency
- Insider or outsider group?
- Community action
- Direct action
- The UK Rivers Network and other groups
- Ireland
- Name of the network
- The structure of the network
- What would the network actually do?
- Your thoughts please!
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 raising the profile of river-environment issues in the UK (and Ireland?). The idea 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.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 UK Rivers Network: part of the solution?
Two recent 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, a new bypass 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, which would suffer many of the same problems as the river crossings built into the Newbury bypass. (The Newbury campaign has, however, spawned an important scientific monitoring programme that will definitively establish how roads pollute their nearby environment.)
Why set up a UKRN?
By setting up a UKRN, we hope to form a permanent network of river-minded groups and individuals who could combine long-term work on for example, joint educational projects or joint approaches to political lobbying with short-term, rapid responses to particular development threats. In this respect, we'd work rather like the International Rivers Network (IRN) and the European Rivers Network (ERN), with whom we have already held exploratory talks and with whom we hope to work very closely as an international partner.Style: What kind of group would this be?
It's important to establish the style
of the group right at the start. Issues include how the group would work
with or relate to the Environment Agency and SEPA, the IRN and ERN, and
the local community and what its policy would be on things like direct
action.
The UKRN and the Environment Agency
The relationship between the UKRN and the Environment Agency is something we need to consider in detail.
In a sense, the Environment Agency is already a "UK rivers network" (though it does, of course, cover only England and Wales). The former National Rivers Authority is the statutory body on river issues in the UK'and therefore the authority in both senses of the word. But because the Environment Agency is a government body, it necessarily operates in a political climate; it is not as free to challenge government policy as some of its staff, environmental NGOs, and members of the public perhaps might like it to do. Nor is it a campaign group or an organization particularly noted for its ability to communicate river issues to ordinary members of the public. Finally, there is often a conflict between different aspects of the Environment Agency's remit: as the statutory body responsible for flood defence, it 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 manages SSSIs).
Interestingly, in neither the Newbury nor the Teigngrace campaigns was the Environment Agency able to object effectively or stop a major development. At Newbury, a procedural irregularity connected with the changeover from the National Rivers Authority to the Environment Agency meant the Highways Agency was able to ignore the EA's objections. Nevertheless, the EA expressed those concerns forcefully (if not publicly) and did, on one occasion, consult a Q.C. about taking legal action. Lobbying by the EA and others persuaded the Highways Agency to increase the spans of its motorway bridges across the rivers (a relatively trivial piece of mitigation considering the damage done overall to the river valleys). At Teigngrace, the situation was arguably more serious. Despite being involved in lengthy discussions with the developer, the EA failed to spot fatal miscalculations in the scheme design that would have led to drastic flooding until halfway through a public inquiry (the inquiry itself only having been called because of last-minute community action).
The Teigngrace case highlights another
problem. The proposed river diversions were effectively discussed (and
approved on the nod) behind closed doors by the developer, the local planning
authority, and the Environment Agency' despite massive public outrage and
opposition. In other words, in this and other cases, local community feeling
played no obvious part in the Environment Agency's response to the development.
Whether local community feeling should play a part in planning decisions
is, of course, a moot point; planning policy guidance (such as PPG1) specifically
allows even the most vociferous community objections to be ignored unless
they are supported firmly by policy and plan infringements. Local communities
are, nevertheless, in the front line where new developments are concerned;
frequently the best judge of whether developments
will succeed, local people also have to live with community change and
compromise and sacrifice their amenities or environmental benefits to private
corporations. And one thing is certain: the planning/policy decision-making
process must be much more transparent to ordinary (and especially local)
people.
The Environment Agency may be able to object
to a development of which it strongly disapproves in principle only on
very narrowly defined grounds, such as increased flood risk; without increased
flood risk, it may be unable to object effectively. This 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 Environment Agency
is unable (or unwilling, for whatever reason) to do so.
On occasions, bureaucracy prevents the
Environment Agency from objecting to environmentally damaging schemes.
At Newbury, for example, the Environment Agency left questions of ecological
damage to English Nature and the division of work between the two statutory
bodies sometimes allows damaging developments to escape between the crack;
the respective roles of the two agencies are not always clear. In some
cases, the Environment Agency leaves ecological issues to English Nature,
but English Nature is unable or unwilling to object because it has too
few resources to attend inquiries. English Nature also readily admits that
it is not a campaigning organization. These drawbacks, which stem largely
from organizational difficulties, contribute to a public perception of
"inaction"'of statutory watchdogs being "toothless watchdogs".
The Environment Agency's record on prosecuting
polluters has often come under fire from groups such as Friends of the
Earth (FoE). Indeed, the Sea Empress tanker spillage off the Welsh coast
in 1996 brought a threat from FoE that they would bring a private prosecution
if the Environment Agency'as seemed likely at the time'failed themselves
to prosecute. The Environment Agency cites different reasons for failing
to prosecute polluters, including the merits of taking a cooperative approach
to achieve systematic long-term reductions in pollution and the difficulties
of getting magistrates to impose credible and effective fines. Does this
system work? According to the EA, yes. In September 1999, The Guardian
reported that: "Rivers and canals in England and Wales are probably cleaner
than they have been since the industrial revolution, with 92% classed as
good enough to support fish life, according to the Environment Agency."
Encouraging though such improvements are, it remains a matter of debate
whether "good enough to support fish life" can truly be said to be a good
indication of water quality.
To summarize the UKRN's relationship with
the Environment Agency: 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 the Environment Agency meets the public's
expectations of its environmental watchdogs.
We should stress that the UK Rivers Network
is not being set up to bait the Environment Agency; rather, it would
aim to be provide an alternative, authoritative voice on river issues,
working 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. We appreciate that the two
approaches may conflict; Iin other words, we believe the UKRN would frequently
need to operate as an "outsider group".
The merits of working as either an insider
or an outsider group have been well charted by environmental academics
such as Robert Garner. Groups such as Surfers Against Sewage, initially
established as radical outsider groups, are now wrestling with the transition
to insider group as their constructive ideas for reform are taken more
seriously. Ideally, environmental issues should be promoted either by a
combination of insider and outsider groups (e.g. CPRE and FoE on planning
issues) or by a group that can effectively combine the insider and outsider
approaches. But at the moment, so far as UK river issues are concerned,
we believe the outsider approach is needed. There is no point in our trying
to duplicate the work that the Environment Agency does; we don't have the
expertise or the resources. Moreover, the people we are trying to involve
in the UK Rivers Network do have, collectively, a great deal of experience
of outsider-group campaigning (though our relative inexperience of insider
group campaigning could be seen as a liability or an exposure).
"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.
At Newbury, a group of community-minded
residents, local businesses, and environmental groups launched their own
highly 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. 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.
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 river basins and
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.
The UKRN has effectively been born out
of the Teigngrace campaign'one of the most powerful demonstrations that
direct action can stop developments and change policies when it is properly
integrated with other campaigning techniques. We will continue to support
the use of direct action in campaigns though we will, at some point, have
to formulate a policy on direct action mindful of our legal status and
liability.
The UKRN, the IRN,
and the ERN
The IRN and the ERN were one of our main
sources of inspiration for the UKRN'. and although we hope to work very
closely with both organizations, there will be no formal relationship with
either of them; 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 IRN
and the ERN devote much of their time to fighting large dam projects; we
don't really have that problem in the UK, but we have other problems such
as floodplain loss, cumulative pollution and degradation of the riverine
environment, use of artificial methods of flood defence (such as pumping
on the Somerset Levels), and too few designated inland "bathing waters"
(i.e. inland recreational waters of a guaranteed minimum quality). One
of our first projects must be to establish what the parallel problems and
priorities are in the UK.
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 Environment Agency itself. We need to tread
carefully and be sensitive to the many years of work already done by other
people in this field. Equally, 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.
Most people seem
to think we should also cover Ireland. With parliaments in Wales and Scotland
and political changes in Northern Ireland, perhaps the term "UK" is now
becoming less relevant. There is certainly no reason to exclude Ireland;
indeed, from a European point of view, it makes sense to include it. Differences
between England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland/Eire are bound to
increase as the parliaments become established, which will make the UKRN
an increasingly complex project. But we might manage this by having representatives
(or even, ultimately, offices) in each country.
We've provisionally called ourselves "the
UK Rivers Network"'but is that the best name? What about Ireland? And is
that name, which takes its cue from the IRN and ERN, really what we're
about, given that we may not operate much like a network (see below)? There
are all sorts of other things we could be called, including more emotive
things that communicate community involvement, like "Save our Rivers".
(Calling ourselves "Save our Rivers: the UK Rivers Network" gives us two
bites). Another possibility would be to call our registered charity (our
educational wing) "The UK Rivers Network" and our limited company (our
political/campaigning wing) something like "Save our Rivers"; the limited
company could be an outsider group and the charity more of an insider group,
perhaps?
Any thoughts or suggestions would be very
welcome.
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.
Fortunately, as the people involved in
this project have experience of working with different kinds of campaign
groups and networks, we are at least able to anticipate what the problems
might be. One solution to the workload problem, for example, is to keep
our projects modular and to make particular individuals responsible for
promoting each one (see "Initial Projects"). All
successful campaign groups inevitably become bogged down with dealing with
school projects and educational work, but we have set up an effective website
to tackle this issue immediately before it could become a problem.
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. (Indeed, in the Internet age, our "campaigners"
can be based anywhere in the country (and even, perhaps, overseas); we
don't all need to sit in an office together.) Another solution would be
to try to establish a network of regional contacts or campaigners, each
"responsible" for the activities in their own area, and with the "national
office" (for want of a better description) responsible only for administration
and coordination or general campaigns with no regional or local focus.
If the UKRN is or
becomes in some sense a network of community and campaign groups, we need
to decide what groups would have to do to belong to (or indeed, be expelled
from) the network. Could any group, holding any view whatsoever, belong
to the UKRN? How would the UKRN reconcile having supporters as potentially
diverse as landed-gentry Scottish fishermen and radical animal rights campaigners
who might violently disagree on issues or tactics? One solution would be
to extend membership to groups rather than to individuals, though this
would not necessarily solve the problem of conflicting, extreme views.
It is our intention to make the UKRN a
dynamic and effective group: to do a job and to do it well. We are not
interested in creating organizational structures and job titles, though
these are problems we may have to address later. Experience
suggests that having no organizational structure (while a fine sentiment)
can create as many (or more) problems as it solves; what we should really
aim for is structure without hierarchy.
Limited company
and/or charity?
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 have some
qualms about the restrictions operating as a charity may place on the effectiveness
of our political work; Greenpeace, for example, are not a charity precisely
for this reason and FoE have repeatedly wrestled with the question of how
they can reconcile their in-principle support for direct action with their
legal responsibilities and the structure of their organization. These are
problems we too will have to address.
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.
We have spoken about trying to identify
an experienced campaigner who might coordinate the activities of the UKRN.
We have something of a "chicken and egg" problem here, in that we cannot
hope to recruit someone of the calibre we'd like without paying a credible
salary (although offering a senior campaigner the prospect of starting
up a major NGO of their own might be a sufficient attraction for the kind
of people we have in mind); on the other hand, without a full-time campaigner
of this sort, we may never be able to put enough effort into the UKRN as
part-time volunteers to give it enough momentum to succeed.
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.
This, of course, raises the other difficult
question: how are we going to pay for all this? Fortunately, again, 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 will have no costs
and no overheads (our website and email addresses, for example, are currently
provided by a free ISP).
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.
But in the longer term, we will need to
identify sources of funding. One possibility may be to seek funding for
our educational and community projects and for our charity to employ one
or more people to work part-time (say three days a week) on that basis;
those same people could then work as unpaid "volunteers" for the limited
company the other two days a week.
Other possibilities include seeking funding
for particular projects from partner groups, such as angling or other environmental
organizations. For example, if we wanted to mount a legal challenge, we
could seek the money collectively through other groups. But this doesn't
solve the problem of paying campaigners or paying the running costs of
the group; we could not reasonably expect other charities or NGOs to pay
our costs.
Campaigning is all about communication
and public education is one of our highest priorities. We have already
made a good start on our educational work by setting up a website. Our
very comprehensive "Finding
out about water pollution" page has already become the number one site
on AOL's search directory'it's the first thing 24 million potential AOL
users will see if they search for "water pollution". This page has proved
enormously popular; it is now regularly attracting 1500-2000 hits per week,
many of them from schoolchildren. We are in the process of developing a
similar page about rivers.
UKRN is also now editing the Dmoz/Open
Directory Project website directory categories "Rivers
and Streams", and "Water
resources/Education", which means we automatically get to review many
new websites on community river projects throughout the world. Because
Dmoz/ODP has now overtaken Yahoo! as the
definitive web directory, this work seems another worthwhile way of promoting
the work of river restoration groups and keeping abreast of what other
groups and are doing; it's also another way to promote the UKRN among peer
group organizations.
Of course many of the projects we would
like to pursue will simultaneously achieve several of our objectives. Setting
up an adopt-a-river scheme could not only help to prevent threats from
development, but would improve community education (both about rivers and
about more general environental issues) and promote a long-term, systematic
improvement in river quality and biodiversity.
Setting up the UKRN website: Our
website provides a central point of contact and an opportunity for international
networking, kicks off our educational work, and demonstrates a certain
credibility and commitment to the project. We have already received lots
of emails, including several from students trying to establish our policies
on certain issues, and one invitation to speak to schoolchildren in the
United States! We have recently moved the website to a better (i.e. more
memorable) domain (https://www.ukrivers.net)
Setting up the UK Rivers Network as
a company limited by guarantee and a registered charity: This demonstrates
that we're really serious and is a prerequisite for certain types of legal
action we might take and certain types of funding we might seek out. The
limited company could be set up in a matter of days (i.e. could be done
quickly in preparation for a legal case, if necessary); the charity might
take 6-12 months to pass through the Charity Commission's procedure. We
also need to identify a high-profile patron (suggestions welcome) -- ideally,
not just a name on a letterhead but someone who will really help to promote
the organization.
Putting together a database of UK rivers
under threat: This is a self-contained project for which we might be
able to obtain funding. It could be a vacation project for a university
student or students. This could also become an annual project or survey
on river health, something like the Marine Conservation Society's annual
beach survey/report.
Making contact with other river-minded
groups and individuals: We already have good contacts with a number
of river-minded people and the website is proving invaluable in making
other contacts. It is essential that we avoid duplicating work done by
other NGOs; we simply don't have the time or the resources. Another possibility
for networking would be to hold a fairly informal one-day national conference
called something like "UK rivers in the 21st century" and use
this either to launch the network or simply as a networking opportunity.
We also plan to issue a regular newsletter, in due course, not least to
reach the many organizations and individuals who do not yet use email and
the World Wide Web. We may also be able to secure
the (free) use of a marquee for use at events, roadshows, summer festivals,
and so on. We should try to include magazines (perhaps Country Life, The
Field etc.) among our sponsors and supporters to gain free supportive publicity,
if we can. It's my intention to submit proposals for articles about the
UKRN to magazines of this sort (when I get a moment).
Planning a high-profile activity to
launch the network: We are considering various options for a high-profile
launch. A major, strategic legal challenge (judicial review) would be a
way of achieving something very positive very quickly and generating national
publicity at the same time'but we would probably need to be a limited company
to do this.
In terms of managing the workload, we might
potentially try to identify a number of volunteers who would be willing
to take on one or more of the following broad areas of our work:
At the moment, the whole project depends
entirely on a few people contributing their time voluntarily'and that will
govern the timetable. Ideally, we would like to have completed (or made
a good start on) all these our initial projects by the end of next year
(2001).
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. Draft number: 3: November 11, 2000.
The
structure of the network
This section outlines how the network
would be structured, staffed, and funded.
What
would the network actually do?
Objectives
In summary, these are our objectives:
The network 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.
Initial projects
These are our first priorities:
When will all this happen?
Photographs: Dusk at the River Itchen, Winchester, 1997.
