Citizens demand British rivers are returned to their natural state
The UK should urgently restore its rivers to their original state and access to nature should be recognised as a human right, the country’s first nationwide citizens’ assembly for nature has said.
The People’s Assembly for Nature, consisting of 100 representatives from across the country, is calling for the government to return all rivers to as close to their natural state as possible and to introduce water metering for all households. The “nature jury” was brought together by the National Trust, the RSPB and WWF.
The approach is similar to a citizen’s assembly on climate change, which in 2020 laid out recommendations for how best to curb emissions.
The People’s Plan for Nature, informed by a further 30,000 online responses from the public, concludes that all commercial and policy decisions should factor in their impact on nature. Sir David Attenborough’s Wild Isles documentary has highlighted how the UK is in the bottom 10 per cent of countries globally for keeping biodiversity intact.
The Times has been calling for an improvement in the state of the country’s rivers in its Clean it Up campaign.
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“We’ve got to stop polluting our rivers. Virtually every river in England is failing [to meet good] ecological status, whether it’s for direct sewage or an agricultural thing,” said Graham Roberts, a retired ecologist in Lyme Regis, one of the 100 participants in the assembly. “Everybody blames everybody — but there is somebody to blame here.”
Roberts claimed that the Environment Agency was an “ineffective” regulator that had “sold its soul to industry”. He said: “It’s got the laws behind it [but] it’s got no delivery, and there’s not a political will to make it have that delivery.”
A House of Lords committee this week criticised Ofwat, the water sector’s regulator, saying that it had failed to make companies invest enough to tackle sewage pollution.
The Times is demanding faster action to improve the country’s waterways. Find out more about the Clean It Up campaign.
