Recognition for small waters in Office for Environmental Protection assessment
13th February 2025
Freshwater Habitats Trust CEO Professor Jeremy Biggs welcomes the recognition of small freshwater habitats in the Office for Environmental Protection’s 2023/24 assessment.
Small waters, such as ponds, headwater streams and alkaline fens, have traditionally been undervalued and overlooked. This is particularly unfortunate because we know that, together, these habitats usually support a wider variety of freshwater plants and animals than larger waterbodies.
We’ve been working to change this for many years – by studying small freshwater habitats, through practical conservation work, and by engaging with policymakers. And this seems to be bearing fruit.
So, we’re especially pleased to see more steps forward in the Office for Environmental Protection’s annual assessment of progress towards England’s legal environmental commitments. The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) is the official environmental watchdog for England and Northern Ireland. It was set up through the Environment Act (2021) to provide independent oversight of the Government’s environmental progress. Their latest assessment makes for troubling reading, with government judged to be ‘largely off track to meet its targets and commitments’.
In producing its assessment, the OEP takes note of evidence from Government, as well as ‘any other information [they] consider appropriate’. Evidence produced by Freshwater Habitats Trust has informed this year’s assessment, and I was asked to act as an expert reviewer for the ‘Clean and Plentiful Water’ chapter of this year’s report.
Important observations about freshwaters
In the assessment, the OEP make some important observations about trends in freshwaters, which we hope the Government will take on board.
We’re pleased to see the OEP recognise that small waters make up a ‘significant portion of the water environment’, within which ‘trends… are poorly understood’. As we’ve argued, Government should address this oversight by bringing small waters into statutory monitoring programmes, alongside the larger rivers and lakes which are the focus of current monitoring.
Importantly, the OEP also note that ‘while polluted rivers are improving, the most diverse and least impacted streams are declining’. This year, we’ll be working with the water sector to investigate how investment in smaller streams could turn these declines around – watch this space!
A call for a new statutory target
Alongside assessing progress, the OEP also provide recommendations to improve the prospects of meeting environmental targets and commitments. This year, several of these pertain to better management of freshwater habitats.
Most importantly, the OEP call for government to introduce a new interim target, under the overarching wildlife-rich habitat target, to ‘create or restore wildlife-rich open-water and river habitats’. If the Government adopts this recommendation, it would go some way to fixing the current underrepresentation of freshwater habitats – and particularly small waters – in statutory environmental targets.
Refocused efforts to reduce agricultural pollution
Insightfully, the OEP also recognise a key challenge facing current efforts to reduce pollution to freshwaters from agriculture. Existing efforts are dogged by the difficulty of rolling out measures across large river catchments, made up of hundreds of separate land holdings. Citing our guidance for Local Nature Recovery Strategies, the OEP suggest that ‘a practical intermediate step could be to focus interventions on smaller upper catchments, where larger proportions of catchments could be de-intensified with greater ecological benefits.’ We agree wholeheartedly with this recommendation, which could hold the key to unlocking real benefits from diffuse pollution management programmes.
We hope that upcoming examination of water regulation in England by the Cunliffe Commission sees the OEP’s recommendations taken forward, paving the way for nature recovery in our beleaguered freshwaters.