As part of their Humber Business Week programme CATCH and the Humber Nature Partnership hosted their joint Humber Environmental Managers Conference on Wednesday 8^th June.  The event was chaired by Martin Jones, HESQ Manager at Yara.  The event was a hybrid session held in person at CATCH and via TEAMs with over 40 delegates.

Martin introduced the first speaker, Ola Ladapo, Senior Policy Advisor at Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs who gave a presentation on the Environment Act who covered key policies in the Act including Green Governance, air quality, resource efficiency, water resource management and restoring nature through measures such as establishing Local Nature Recovery Strategies across England.  You can sign up for email alerts from DEFRA here https://preferences.mailshot.defra.gov.uk/

The next presentation was from Tammy Smalley, Head of Conservation at Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust and covered an important aspect of the Environment Act on Biodiversity Net Gain.  Tammy detailed the exceptional opportunities for nature recovery and enhancement in the Greater Lincolnshire area and confirmed that there will be a local nature recovery strategy for Greater Lincolnshire with some work already completed on biodiversity opportunity mapping.  Tammy commented on how important Biodiversity Net Gain is to the enhancement of nature and is at the heart of the Environment Act.  Tammy outlined that developers are seen as the ‘buyers’ from landowners as the ‘sellers’ in a system facilitated by planning authorities, Natural England and Wildlife Trusts.  A project called Green Investment in Greater Lincolnshire (GIGL) has secured a grant to create a fair, equitable and transparent market in natural environment asset trading across Greater Lincolnshire to ensure a vibrant and prosperous green investment economy that delivers for people and wildlife.  Delegates were urged to contact the team for more details, especially you are a buyer gigl@lincstrust.co.uk

After a short break Dr Pauline Deutz from the University of Hull gave a presentation on the Circular Economy highlight how companies are engaging with the circular economy and to what extent places benefit from a CE transition.  Pauline highlighted recent research at regional scale through collaboration of places & companies, employment implications, repair sector attitudes and the involvement of social enterprises.

The final presentation was a very timely update on Environmental Constraints in Industrial Clusters which has started looking at water constraints in the Humber as a Pathfinder Project given by Tom Glyn-Jones from the Environment Agency.  Tom outlined the project and presented some early evidence showing the water intensity of proposed technologies being used to reduce industrial carbon emissions.  Tom explained that estimated climate impacts will further challenge availability of water for industrial uses.  The final report is due to be shared with stakeholders shortly and funding has been secured for a phase 2 over next 2 years to include the whole East Coast Cluster

If members of the Environmental Managers Network wish to contact the Agency to find out more about phase 1 of our project, ask us questions, or would like to participate as a stakeholder in phase 2, please use this e-mail address climatechangesupport@environment-agency.gov.uk

The next Humber Environmental Managers Network will be held on Weds 5 October, for more information about this and other CATCH Networks please contact katie.hedges@catchuk.org