Reducing flood risk and improving the environment

Prospect rep Jon Hollis reveals how his work on the frontline of the climate emergency, as a natural flood management programme manager at the Environment Agency, helps to improve the environment, protect habitats and increase biodiversity.

Natural Flood Management (NFM) is the term that we give to nature-based solutions that help to reduce flood risk.

We’ve got just under 60 pilot projects across England, looking not only at how we can reduce flood risk but also improve habitats and increase biodiversity.

We want to reduce flooding and improve the environment but also to share the learning and work with local communities so that they can make better use of NFM in the future. Given the scale of the climate emergency, we won’t be able to build our way out of future flood risk problems purely with hard engineering.

Hopefully, this work will encourage more communities to take some ownership of their flood risk and, not just to reduce some of the risk, but also make their environment a nicer place to be.

We started this back in 2016/17 and we were very much coming at it from the perspective of reducing flood risk and the wider benefits that can be achieved in terms of water quality, biodiversity, and social benefits – like health and recreation.

Jon Hollis

But with what’s happened over the last year with COVID-19 we’ve seen a shift in how communities perceive and value the environment around them.

People in lockdown have found they need nature in their lives, and they’re got that through going on walks in their local area and discovered places on their doorstep that they didn’t know about before.

So, I think there’s now the momentum for people to get involved and change things for the better in their area.

NFM programme

The programme that I look after has £15 million of government funding and we are testing a variety of NFM solutions across the length and breadth of England.

We’ve got projects in Kent, in Devon and Cornwall; we’ve got a project in Northumberland, and  Cumbria and then there are quite a few scattered everywhere in between.

We’ve even got a few small projects in and around Greater London as well, which is fantastic. People perceive natural flood management as something that can only be done in rural areas, but it can be done in urban environments as well.

These projects are very much about partnerships and working with local community groups. There’s not one project that isn’t a partnership, and they all require buy-in from the community and landowners as well.

We made the conscious decision to select projects across England that looked at different NFM measures.

For example, leaky structures within the channel slow the flow and hold water back, so it doesn’t impede water in low flows but when you get high flows, water catches on those leaky structures.  They’re usually made of wood and we are mimicking what happens through the environment naturally. Hence, it’s a nature-based solution.

There’s also peatland restoration. A lot of peat is degraded in this country and blocking the grips, which are the channels through the water, and encouraging moss to grow there.

This not only has great benefits for slowing the flow but a wetter peatland and peat bog on the hills is less likely to catch fire; we’ve had some of the worst wildfires in this country in the last couple of years that have devastated some moorlands.

We’ve also got projects that are looking at how we prevent coastal erosion by putting sand in a certain place and allowing the coastal processes to move it around.

We’re working with farmers to encourage them to plough across a hill rather than up and down the slope, which can help slow the flow and stop soil runoff. This is where a lot of farmers have used fertiliser and that’s how it can end up polluting rivers. It is bad for the ecology of the rivers and impacts on fish and other species that rely on the water environment.

So, we’re trying a lot of different things, tree planting is another, across the country.

Has the climate emergency made reducing flood risk more urgent?

Over the years, what I’ve noticed is that people are now more aware of flood risk, the flood warning system and our flood maps that show you where water can flow.

The government has a Natural Risk Register and the threat of a global pandemic was top of that list for many years and, obviously, that’s now come to pass. But flooding is also high up on the register.

It’s not just the environmental or financial impact of flooding; the mental health impacts of floods are far reaching and they are not to be underestimated. There’s a saying along the lines of ‘the flood doesn’t have to kill you, to take your life.’

I think people are more aware of the risks of flooding, but some communities may not want some of the measures that we – the government or local authority – might have considered for them. It might change the way the village or the town looks aesthetically, or for other reasons.

However, I would say it feels like flood risk is higher up people’s agenda now. We are increasingly aware of things like tree planting and peatland restoration and how that can have a massive benefit for flood risk, as well as doing lots of other wonderful things for the environment too.