A river is made of water flowing through the catchment and flooding often the result of too much water reaching pinch points all at once. Looking at the whole of the catchment, natural flood management alleviates the pressure by slowing the flow of water.
This gives communities precious time to prepare, lowers the flood peak and reduces the likelihood of water entering homes and businesses.
While natural flood management is not a silver bullet, its capacity to hold water in the landscape plays an important role in flood risk reduction and nature recovery. By holding soil on land, it can help improve water quality, restore habitat and create a more natural catchment.
What this could look like:
Natural Flood Management is not the complete solution to reducing flood risk. It is one of many tools needed to manage flood events. Used in conjunction with other flood management solutions (such as hard engineering, land use planning and sustainable urban drainage schemes), Natural Flood management will have a beneficial impact on slowing the flow of flood water downstream.
Our work depends on good relationships with communities at risk, local authorities, the Environment Agency and landowners. We work on solutions which work alongside those looking after the land and address the concerns and opportunities natural flood management can provide.
We are able to deliver natural flood management work from conception to completion:
From 2021-2024, WWF and Aviva worked together to restore UK landscapes, build healthier, more resilient communities and transform one of the biggest indirect drivers of climate change: the UK finance sector.
This partnership enabled Trent Rivers Trust to explore the challenges around the delivery of Nature-based Solutions in the Soar catchment to reduce flood risk, including capital work, through technical support and funding.
As the project comes to a close, Trent Rivers Trust shares insights on natural flood management delivery, community engagement and barriers to mainstreaming Nature-based Solutions as part of a technical and summary report.
The reports call for a strategic framework to lift Nature-based Solutions from the margins into the mainstream, outline the necessary pathways and quantify how the widespread adoption of Nature-based Solutions can protect the economy in the Soar catchment.
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