The conventional approach to water management is top-down and involves expensive hard engineering techniques. The complex nature of climate change and its associated water-related effects requires a catchment-based and collaborative approach with greater landowner involvement. This project seeks to foster this through new ways of driving practical delivery in the field, via participatory approaches to problem solving and implementation. This would be supported by scientific understanding and a professional cadre of technical providers, able to work with landowners and encourage them to take action.

Whilst measures to reduce runoff and soil erosion exist, their uptake to reduce flood risk is limited and piecemeal. There is increasing demand for action. Following April 2013 winter floodings, the UK National Farmers Union called for a fresh approach to flood management, specifically catchment solutions, and a more active role for some farms to trap, store and slow water. However, such measures have a voluntary rather than regulatory basis, and the usual top-down approach promulgated by agencies has not been very successful.

TRIPLE C enabled a more effective integration of practical implementation and decision-making in environmental management, with a greater role for effective intermediaries to convene, communicate, mediate and translate the best available understanding to the farming community.

The key objective of the TRIPLE C project was to implement a set of cost-effective, innovative actions to reduce flooding. Partners also sought to develop a new participative approach to problem solving and implementation with landowners. Upstream implementation of the water retention and erosion control measures reduces flooding and associated issues further downstream. An estimated additional 168,000m3 water storage, €6.1M cost savings from reduced flood damages and dredging costs, and 1150 households with enhanced flood protection was expected and successful solutions were planned to be replicable in other regions.

The cooperation early in the project was particularly useful, especially the early Partner meetings in Somerset and Ghent, learnings were exchanged about water retention and erosion control measures. Information exchange between partners gave new insights and inspirations. The main project outputs would never have been created without the cooperation effort, such as: an Action Plan identifying solutions for managing flood risk, adaptable for individual catchment areas; a method developed to build knowledge capacity, based on a catchment-based, collaborative approach, and an improved sediment model to demonstrate the effects of implementing erosion control measures. The model implementation outside Flanders was only possible due to the cooperation and data exchange with the project partners. These outputs are the tangible products that together with the pilot sites started influencing the wider group of interested stakeholders around the project. The discussions mobilised by the partnership helped reduce the implementation risks of applying the new participative approaches, and led to significantly better implementation of these pilots.

Understanding a broader context of flood risk management measures across different countries and agricultural methods was crucial to help individual partners work more effectively with their respective landowners. There were differences between the catchments with the Culm grasslands of Devon Wildlife Trust at one extreme and ZLTO (Zuidelijke Land en Tuinbouw Organisatie)’s horticulture at the other. Other catchments included elements of both which meant there was a lot of learning between partners, and new ideas and ways of operating were brought back. For example, Belgian partners learned new erosion control techniques from the project partners and how to approach and convince farmers. The knowledge exchange between the partners would not have been possible without the project.