Natural Flood Management - lessons learned
Natural flood management (NFM) can provide a range of benefits to society, from flood risk reduction to improved biodiversity and carbon sequestration, and we are likely to see more of it as it becomes part of mainstream policies. However there are lots of challenges to address if NFM is to become embedded in land management.
Those challenges were set out in the Environment Agency’s Natural Flood Management Programme Evaluation Report published earlier this month, which reviewed the programme of 60 NFM pilot schemes across the country. The lessons learned included:
It is difficult to prove the effectiveness of NFM in reducing flood risk to specific properties, but it can enhance hard engineered flood mitigation measures and provide additional benefits, such as biodiversity and recreation opportunities
Partnership working and collaboration is important – successful NFM projects are those which involve the wider community
Effective engagement with landowners is critical and it can take time to address landowner concerns over siting of interventions, responsibility for maintenance and liability
NFM typically involves many small scale interventions, such as leaky dams, retention ponds and riparian tree planting, which can be difficult to deliver at scale over a whole catchment
Obtaining all the consents needed – from land drainage consents to planning permission – can be time-consuming and complicated
Better monitoring is needed to demonstrate the benefits of NFM
Long term funding for maintenance of features is essential
The Environment Agency is continuing to explore ways to make NFM easier to adopt, including by working with the Catchment Sensitive Farming scheme and by incorporating NFM measures into future Countryside Stewardship scheme packages.
Private investors might also be interested in NFM projects, particularly where the investor has an interest in the catchment where the project will be delivered, as has been demonstrated in the Wyre catchment in Lancashire. Where schemes can deliver multiple benefits, might we in future see these packaged into “environmental credits” which businesses will buy to help improve their environmental footprint?
15th December 2022