Engage with decision-makers – politicians, government agencies, water companies and business – to influence the rules and regulations, and to showcase what can be done on the ground.

Businesses – from farmers and manufacturers to suppliers and retailers – are exposed to the same water challenges as communities and ecosystems: too much or too little water, pollution, and certainty of supply.

The WaterLIFE project, which ran from 2014 to 2017, sought to tackle some of the big issues hindering our rivers being classed as healthy, such as over-abstraction, pollution and unsustainable management.

Case Study for the Tamar Citizen Science Investigations (CSI) project, aimed to encourage local interest groups, residents and communities to engage with their local river catchment and become actively involved in its environmental protection.

In many catchments, there are often specialist groups with very particular and focused interests in the freshwater environment who can be very valuable contributors to the development of a catchment plan.

People living and working in the Tamar catchment were invited to share their photos and stories about what the river meant to them and to create their own artwork inspired by the river and local environment.

Sediment fingerprinting technology relies upon identifying significant differences in the chemical properties of soil from different sediment sources.

RiverSearch is a citizen Science project coordinated by Surrey Wildlife Trust on behalf of the River Wey Landscape Partnership and the River Mole catchment partnership.

Invasive species such as Giant Hogweed, Japanese Knotweed and Himalayan Balsam, pose a serious threat to our natural heritage by out-competing native species.  They can out-compete because the natural checks and balances (e.g. predation) which native species are subject to do not affect non-native species. 

Within Gloucestershire, the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) and the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI) at the University of Gloucestershire have developed an integrated local delivery (ILD) framework, implemented in a range of situations, that enables those with local skills and environmental land management knowledge to contribute to the management of sensitive and key environmental sites.

Towards Hydrocitizenship joins a growing body of academic and policy initiatives which seek to address local hydrospheres (interconnected water flows and exchanges) holistically, in ways which address these interdependent issues on catchment and systems based scales.

Demonstration Test Catchments (DTC) is a UK government-funded project designed to provide robust evidence regarding how diffuse pollution from agriculture can be cost-effectively controlled to improve and maintain water quality in rural river catchment areas.