Natural flood management: An everyday choice for all rather than a special case for some
Environment Agency
It's our job to look after your environment and create better places for people and wildlife.
Nature based solutions are not new to flood and coastal risk management practitioners. For years, many of our beaches have been managed to take the energy out of stormy seas to protect our coasts. Many places are already re-meandering rivers and installing leaky dams to slow the flow and help store floodwaters. And urban planners are increasingly recognising the role that sustainable drainage systems can play in controlling surface water runoff by mimicking natural drainage as closely as possible.
Too often, people talk about making a choice between traditional ?(engineered) defences or nature-based solutions – as if there were conflict or competition between them. Our work on natural flood management (NFM) has helped us to understand the role that?nature-based solutions can play in complementing conventional flood or sea defences to enhance flood and coastal resilience.
One of the key messages coming from the recent COP27 conference was that we must take action now to plan and prepare for how climate change is affecting sea-level rise, extreme weather events, and flood risk. And this week, governments from around the world are coming together for COP15 to agree on how to halt and reverse nature loss.
As our chief executive at the Environment Agency often says: ‘Our thinking needs to change faster than the climate.’ The good news is that natural flood management is a way to address all these challenges. Today, we are publishing the evaluation of a recent ￡15m investment programme, where we have invested government funding in 60 natural flood management projects across the country.
The pilots have shown that natural flood management not only improves resilience to flooding, but also benefits nature recovery and stores carbon, helping to regulate the local climate. Collectively the NFM programme has created an equivalent of 1.6 million cubic metres of water storage and increased flood resilience to 15,000 homes. In addition, the programme contributed to nature recovery: improving 4,000 hectares of habitat, improving 610 kilometres of river and planting 100 hectares of woodland.
From the NFM pilots programme we have learnt 4 key lessons:
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We are using this learning to help us to do more and better natural flood management projects in the future as part of our commitment to deliver the ambitions of the national Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy, working with a wide range of partners including the Rivers Trust and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. Alongside, we also have a government target to double the number of natural flood management projects over the next five years.
To find out more about natural flood management, what we’ve learnt through our recent ￡15m investment programme, and what we’re doing to put this learning into practice, have a look at the evaluation report at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/natural-flood-management-programme-evaluation-report
Article written by Julie Foley , our Director of Flood Risk Strategy and Natural Adaptation.
Environmental Services Professional
1 年Yes well I understand one thing about nature if it's green it's good if it's brown it's dead I have nothing to say about how farmers work the land and how much they really care but think about this for a minuit all the unused spaces a few acres here a few acres there all around Scotland England Wales and the rest of ware ever the few acres maybe fly tipping is a problem we know but the simple fact is regulations and that is the job of the environment agency when I first started in recycling cullet I was told that all I need to do was get the little green book with the codes of conducts along with the waste carriers licence well there's no one making sure in the agency that that rule is carried out and stuck by for those (3 years a long with all regulations of the code of conduct.millioms of tyres going to land fill and there's 1000 of acres not been used and there's billions of bees that can't live on land fills but with so many tyres and all the spare spaces creat with all those tyres bee gardens one good idea can make a defence 0IQ RSPCTH.
Experienced Planning Professional (Views expressed are my own and not necessarily representative of my employer)
1 年How do we secure the land to do this? Are there incentives for farmers to introduce such measures and turn some of their land into semi-wetlands?
Unltd star award winner. Big Local Champion . Urban Farming/ Community development & Events
1 年Plymouth : the entire seafront of the city ,from Marshmills , the Barbican to Millbay and Stonehouse and the Naval Dockyard . What is Plymouth to do when all these areas are barely 1 metre above sea level and the main focus of investment narratives . It boggles my brain ????
A Passionate Environmental & Nature Photographer, Writer & Naturalist
1 年Who would have thought a few logs would create such a headline?
Engineer at Devon County Council
1 年Can someone advise how the logs don't pop out in a flood event please? We see a lot of debris float down rivers and damage our bridges, we then have to spend a lot of money on repairs / getting the logs etc out of the river.