Rob Lawson: Much has been written about water security risks to business, but to date there has been relatively little attention on the how this relates to the UK private sector. Artesia Consulting (http://artesia-consulting.co.uk/) recently completed a project for WWF-UK to provide water stewardship resources to companies in the UK, with a focus on water […]
The text of the speech given by Ofwat CEO Cathryn Ross at the Water UK Innovation Hub. It reflects on the lessons from PR14, on the need for customers key concerns now and in the long term. Considering the new Resilience duty is a key element to this and the speech elaborates on how she […]
Resilience is the Cabinet Office approved idea that all the regulators, including Ofwat, are having to come to terms with. The original Cabinet Office definitions looked rather like versions of sustainability repackaged http://cmscoms.com/?p=1684 . On a more pragmatic note the challenges of major events like the floods of 2007 and storms and floods of 2014 […]
Thanks to Bruce Horton for highlighting this report that puts flesh on the bones of the major international challenges facing the water sector A new WWF report examines the physical, regulatory and reputational risks around water management that UK businesses face, both domestically and internationally. It sets out a water stewardship framework to help businesses […]
Sustainability and resilience are not the same thing but both require a clear assessment of the long term direction of travel. With water companies now having legal duties to deliver both sustainability and resilience this is a helpful set of ideas. Athough it’s American these ideas based on five years of research highlight key areas […]
Speaking at a Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) event this morning, the regulator’s director of parliamentary and public affairs Nicci Russell said that by keeping the definition broad and open to interpretation it allows the water companies to meet their own relevant needs. She said that resilience has a “broad scope” and […]
Human societies are not resilient to extreme weather, according to a new report released by the Royal Society last week. Human exposure to extreme weather is set to increase with continued changes in global climate and population size, location and age. The Resilience to Extreme Weather report identifies the regions most vulnerable to floods, droughts […]
The approaches to sustainability take many named forms – One Planet Living – ICZM – The Ecosystems Approach. Government and in particular the Cabinet Office seem to have taken to a particular shine to another version ‘Resilience’. If you look at the diagram below based on Cutter et al. (2010), ‘Disaster Resilience Indicators for Benchmarking […]