Testing a Community Approach to Catchment Management

Project Status: Completed
Type of Project: Research Project
Principal Investigator: Dr Claire Waterton (Email)
Website

Publications, Data and Other Outputs
Policy and Practice Note
Loweswater Care Project Leaflet

Objectives

This project will be considering a specific water catchment area – that of Loweswater in the Lake District – and looking at how scientists, institutional stakeholders and the non-experts who actually live in a catchment can share expertise and work together positively for the benefit of that environment. They will be considering questions such as whether the current government “carrot and stick” initiatives are the best option to ensure that landowners look after the environment, or whether involving them more in decision making and using their local knowledge would be a viable alternative approach.

Loweswater is a small but variable catchment which already has a high level of community involvement in its management. The research will be looking at a range of economic and social issues within the community, including defining who actually constitute the community of Loweswater, and how they use and relate to the land. They will be building on research already carried out on the relationship between the water quality in Loweswater and algae present in the lake, and how these relate to the management of the land. They will also look at the impact of changes on the water quality of the lake and fish populations, which are important from the perspectives of both tourism and local use.

The objectives are to find ways of understanding and managing the land and the lake environment, reducing pollution, and creating a mechanism for long term community and stakeholder involvement. Many of these generic lessons about involving local communities, institutional stakeholders and researchers from different disciplines could then be applied more widely.