“What is Land for?; - managing land and water in an integrated way”

Integrated land use can help us manage the water environment. It can reduce water borne pollution, hold back flood water and ensure water storage. But how can we improve the ecology of our lakes, rivers and estuaries?

With the continuing advancement of climate change, land management is becoming even more important. But so is the management of the water environment.
The right kinds of land use can help us manage the water environment. It can reduce water borne pollution, hold back flood water and ensure water storage. Our wetlands don't just need to stay wet for biodiversity, but for other reasons, too'. We need to manage land and water in concert. That means knowing what we want to use land (and water) for, establishing national and local priorities and agreeing cost effective actions by a number of players. We need a land use planning system that delivers those priorities, a reformed Common Agricultural Policy to incentivise land managers and new tools for managing river basins for the public good.
In this paper Pam will set out our current thinking about how we manage river basins and the contribution land use makes. The new tools and techniques being developed for the Water Framework Directive are helping to bring clarity to the relationship between land use and the state of the water environment. New classification tools are showing us, for the first time, that the ecology of our lakes, rivers and estuaries are not as good as they should be. River Basin Plans must set out how collective action can stop things getting worse and improve current conditions.

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