Britain’s rivers are under the spotlight because of an untreated sewage crisis, and the pendulum of floods and droughts that are the hallmark of a warming world. But hidden within these policy debates is a pervasive and under reported issue: quite simply, people have forgotten what a natural river even looks like.
This is important because it underpins attitudes towards the kind of rivers people expect to live with, and therefore constrains the changes to rivers that people will be willing to accept. Scientific evidence says radically different looking rivers are needed in order to accommodate larger, more frequent floods and droughts, to deliver increases in biodiversity, and to store more carbon.
