Flooding costs the UK economy around £2.2 billion annually, with over 4 million people and £200 billion of assets currently at risk. The number of people at high risk from flooding in the UK is predicted to double by 2080, disproportionately impacting socially and economically marginalised populations.
Typically, flood interventions used hard engineering approaches that are rarely developed in consultation with communities. Nature-based interventions (NBI) have the potential to deliver a wide range of physical and social benefits that are more integrated with community needs.
The CONVERSE project will work with communities in the Mersey catchment to identify how they would like to manage flood risk in their local areas, with a particular focus on NBI. Examples of natural solutions used in other areas of the UK include woodland planting and leaky dams.
By working with local communities and stakeholders across the region the project will explore how communities interact with these interventions, work alongside them to co-design monitoring strategies, and compare their community-developed suggestions with conventional monitoring methods.
The project, which involves both University engineers and social scientists from the Heseltine Institute, is one of three supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Engaged Environmental Science programme. They are the first NERC research projects to be co-led by local community members and scientists from beginning to end.
CONVERSE is led by Dr Annie Ockelford and the key partners are the University of Liverpool, Faiths4Change, Mersey Forest, the University of Leeds and Woodland Trust.
Image: helloimnik at Unsplash
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