4.4. What has been difficult to progress?

Figure 5 The relative importance of freshwater issues from questionnaire responses

4.4. What has been difficult to progress?

“People’s perceptions: farming is benign and sewage is nasty. There is a social and political mismatch between this and the genuine impact on the environment”

Anonymous

Diffuse pollution, both urban and rural, was the issue most frequently cited in the interviews as having been difficult to gain progress on. It was felt that progress had been made on the “low hanging fruit” of point source pollution, with the diffuse issues remaining more difficult to gain any significant traction on. Diffuse issues are difficult to resolve due to the multiple stakeholders involved, the fact that it is so widespread, that it is poorly regulated, there is a paucity of enforcement resources for what regulation does exist and governance is unclear. In comparison point source pollution generally has fewer, and more easily identifiable sources and stakeholders and therefore it has been somewhat easier to regulate.

The impacts of diffuse agricultural pollution (nutrients and sediments) are relatively well known, so standards and targets for their reduction can be set. There is a paucity of evidence on the impacts of other pollutants, principally micropollutants (PFOS, microplastics, metals, herbicides, anti-microbial resistant pathogens etc), which makes them particularly difficult to progress. In fact, one respondent stated it was difficult to accurately assess the relative risk of agricultural nutrient and sediment pollution compared to micropollutants (PFOS, microplastics, metals, herbicides, antimicrobial resistant pathogens etc) because of the lack of evidence of the impact of micropollutants on freshwaters. In the case of chemical pollutants, two respondents (one from a water company and

one from a public body) saw poor application of chemicals regulation, in particular REACH, as one of the challenges in addressing these emerging pollutants: “some chemicals are found to be damaging 20-30 years after introduction……this allows full scale application to society and environment to be the test to see if there is an impact. This gives the chemical industry time to develop lots of other chemicals to replace them, which are potentially more harmful. REACH never effectively catches up…… This is a major structural flaw that impacts on freshwaters.” They felt that the precautionary principle has not been applied as required by law.

Multiple other issues were cited as having been difficult to progress: accessing funding, influencing Government prioritisation, tackling habitat destruction, reducing abstraction, regulating chemical pollution, increasing public awareness and valuing of freshwaters, developing good relationships between food producers and conservation organisations, tackling plastic pollution, mitigation/adaptation to climate change, addressing lack of public access, INNS, addressing flooding and morphological alterations. Across these diverse issues identified in the interviews, there was no clear pattern in the responses by type of organisation (NGO, government body, water company).

The two issues most frequently cited as being “very challenging” to gain progress on in the online questionnaire were “the combined impact of multiple stressors” and “securing resources to address freshwater issues” (Figure 6). Several interviewees referred to the “nexus” between water, energy and food. It is this interconnectedness and the difficulty in joining things up that is a recurring theme in the pressures facing freshwaters. Although the aim of this review was to describe the actions and priorities of the freshwater sector, it is not a discrete sector, and it is important to recognise its interconnectedness with other sectors.

Figure 6 Questionnaire responses to issues challenging to progress