Graphic: UK Rivers Network logo
You are here: Home page > About us > Setting up the UK Rivers Network

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

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".
 

Insider or 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).

Community action

"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.

Direct action

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.

Ireland

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.

Name of the network

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.
 
 
 

The structure of the network


This section outlines how the network would be structured, staffed, and funded.

Network, office'. NGO?

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.

Staffing

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.

Funding

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.
 
 

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.

Education

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.
 
 

Initial projects

These are our first priorities:

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:

  1. Campaigning: One person to look after national campaigns. As many people as we can find to be regional representatives (either by county, regional or RDA area, river basin, or some other logical division). [Limited company task]
  2. Policy: Someone experienced in river policy work to review and respond to consultations (e.g. from bodies as diverse as the ETR Select Committee, EA, SEPA, and the European Commission, and NGOs such as Surfers Against Sewage) and to develop our own policy agenda. [Limited company/Charity]
  3. Education and information: Someone to develop educational materials, including managing the website, talking to schools, responding to information requests from students, etc. [Charity]
  4. Networking: Someone to make contact (and develop alliances?) with other river groups, fishing groups, water groups, and so on. Overlaps substantially with campaigning area, but possibly a separate job. [Limited company]
  5. Community projects: Actively trying to set up grassroots alliances, local river regeneration projects, etc. [Charity]
  6. Media: Someone to monitor press coverage on river issues, write press releases, give interviews, build up contacts with journalists, and so on. [Limited company]
  7. Administration: General administrative and finance work [Charity/Limited company].
When will all this happen?

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).
 


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.

Draft number: 3: November 11, 2000.
Photographs: Dusk at the River Itchen, Winchester, 1997. 
 

Follow us on Facebook Subscribe to RSS feed