Prof Graham Harris of Lancaster Environment Centre, along with colleagues this week hosted a successful international summit in Windermere focussed on ‘Achieving Ecological Outcomes’. Working with colleagues from the FBA, the summit welcomed scientists from the US, Australia, South Africa and Europe to attempt to get to grips with issues of catchment management. Among the issues that resonated for me were (1) an agreement that raising high level awareness does have value (see my previous post by the EA’s director of Evidence) (2) general acceptance of the view that we are in it for the long haul and that and positive change in water quality will probably take tens of years to show an improvement, if at all…. So the challenge is to persuade the nation that we have the issue but at the same time we investing water quality for future generations and certainly not Water Framework Directive Targets of 2015….. Congratulations to Graham and team for an excellent meeting, helped along by the beauty of the Lake DIstrict in the spring sun. Some snaps I took at the meeting are available here…
