Environmental Scientists from Cascade Consulting, Louie Ramsden, Joe Kenyon and Clare Black, attended a knowledge exchange event in Lancaster on Monday 28th January. Hosted by IEMA and Lancaster University, the event highlighted key issues relating to water and river catchment management, with a focus on the risks and opportunities facing business.
For Lancaster alumni Joe and Clare, this was also a good opportunity to see some familiar faces and learn more about how the work of the Lancaster Environment Centre has progressed since their time there.
Taking place at the Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC), this event provided a good opportunity to raise awareness of Cascade’s work evaluating the Government’s “Catchment-Based Approach” – a new approach to improving river health and compliance with the Water Framework Directive.
Defra commissioned an evaluation team led by Cascade Consulting, to undertake an independent review of the pilot phase across 25 river catchments in England, to inform wider adoption of the approach. Clare Black from the evaluation team gave a presentation to describe the team’s work to date, focussing on some of the key lessons learnt so far from participants in the pilot catchments and how this would inform the Government’s plans for wider adoption of this approach from April 2013.
The presentation was well received, with many audience members encouraged by early signs of plans for a more co-ordinated and sustainable way of working with a range of stakeholders at the catchment scale.
Following the successful launch of the Catchment Change Management Hub last week, the event also featured a talk from Keith Beven (Lancaster University) from the project team, to increase the profile of the Hub amongst environmental students and professionals, as well as businesses who may be key stakeholders for their catchments. The event, as a knowledge exchange, also provided invaluable access to new information and research that could be incorporated into the Hub.
Further information about the event can be found here: http://www.lec.lancs.ac.uk/news_and_events/events/events_archive.php?event_id=1058
Presentations will be made available on the Demonstrating Catchment Management website shortly: http://www.demonstratingcatchmentmanagement.net/