It used to run straight, but now it wiggles. From every angle, whether you are standing in the basin or on the crests of the mountains that surround it, the river looks like it should. Like a great shimmering vein, languidly threading its way through trees and wetlands, into the distance. Birds surround it. Cattle drink from it. Invertebrates, microscopic water life, and others – toads and fish – are returning, when once they couldn’t be found. It was notably crystalline clear before, which obscured its true state. It was a dead river. But now it has an altogether cloudier composition. More mysterious. More complex. More alive.

This transformation and revitalisation didn’t come about through divine intervention or freak natural occurrence. On closer inspection, and a considered moment of observation, the influence and inspiration of the human hand is everywhere. It’s in the gravel beaches and the burred meadows – too strangely perfect – designed to keep the water moving more easily. There are boulders and trees, seemingly fallen and inconveniencing the river’s intentions, but in fact sensitively placed there to “slow the flow”; reducing the quantity of water from overloading urban infrastructure downstream and eroding the banks too. But that’s just what we see.

A nearby sewage works – owned and operated by the local water company – is serviced by the river’s revival, just as much as, if not more than, the wildlife. They’ve been happy to sink capital into the project – a trivial amount compared to the profits that they make – because the river can do the work for them. Wetlands, gravel beds and trees remove and reduce pollutants or nutrients from the water, thus reducing the work that the treatment plant does, as well as the labour required to service it, and extending its life. To the liberal, this is a “win-win” situation. The landowner, the farmer, the community, the tourists, the water company – even nature – they all gain!

And there’s some truth to that. But it distorts, and doesn’t account for, the social relations and broad changes which underpin and are accelerated by a project such as this. The landowner is an environmental Non-Governmental Organisation (eNGO), which uses its contract with the tenant farmer as leverage to naturalise the land. Sometimes, it is favoured and profitable, other times it is not. The tenant farmer works within increasingly fine margins and relies on subsidies provided by the state. Naturalisation could reduce the amount of land usable for production and requires the navigation of opaque, alien bureaucratic state structures. It could be yet another reason for the next generation to sell up. The corporate farmers have the means to navigate the state, but won’t lease or buy the land, as it has a protected status and can’t be as rigorously exploited, so they’ll focus capital and energies elsewhere. Rather than finding another leaseholder, the eNGO retains the contract, returns the site to a wild, natural state, and expands.

The community suffers the loss of itself – it increasingly becomes a more transient and temporary thing – and what’s left of it relies on tourism, a service-based economy. The tourists descend on and visit a natural environment, but one that is increasingly separate and distant from their daily, urbanised existence. It is a thing to preserve, like a painting in a museum, rather than to live in unity with, and respect. Farms remain but are not worked, they become second homes for finance bros or London professionals, often sinking inherited wealth into the only thing that consistently appreciates in value: land. And then there’s the water company. The area is transformed. There is less abstraction of water¹, less discharge or pollution to it and less work that the asset must do, enabling the company to return positive environmental impact in its yearly audit, reduce headcount through “natural attrition”, legitimise itself in the eyes of the market and sweat the asset for longer.

The above account is fictional, but could be one of any number of Nature Based Solution (NBS) projects in Britain. Some of the details might change. The land is sold and purchased by a corporate landlord, who forces their tenant farmer off with bullying tactics and develops it. They tarmac the lot and plug into Victorian sewers, which are quickly overloaded during intense rainfall and then the water company must discharge the sewage into a neighbouring brook, killing everything. However, the story is the same, one of commodification, exploitation, expansion and monopoly. But rarely, like the account above, does the natural environment not suffer as a result too. This story is an exception. An anomaly. The situation is far more dire.

The Water

Taken in its totality – with it being so connected and interdependent – it is impossible to privilege any one feature of Earth’s system. However, when looked at socially, no one could deny the primary place of water. It is a tired phrase, but an accurate one: water is the stuff of life. It is no mistake or sad irony then, that it has been relentlessly dominated and abused.

Nowhere is the plundering and scorched-earth nature of late-stage capital so stark as in the case of water. The sewage pollution crisis is its visceral representation. Water companies operate a private monopoly that routinely spills raw, untreated sewage into inland and coastal waters, killing habitats, poisoning swimmers and the water supply (which they then must treat), whilst extracting huge profits through sweating assets and amounting debt, then shifting the economic burden onto the taxpayer. It is exactly as it seems – daylight robbery, class warfare and ecocide – but this is not even half the story.

While pollution from sewage treatment presents a significant threat to the health of water bodies and evokes a strong image in everyone’s minds, diffused rural pollution (from multiple sources, predominantly agriculture) is the largest contributor to their poor state². Natural fertilisers, containing high amounts of chemical elements such as phosphorus and nitrogen, which act as nutrients and are spread on fields to maximise crop yields, are frequently over-applied³. This pollutes the soil and the excess enters the water environment causing algal blooms and the starving of fish and invertebrates of oxygen. But this is not all. Most fertilisers are from slurry (animal shit), which often contain bacteria and pathogens, or they’re off-site wastes such as sewage sludge (human shit) and are only partially treated for certain chemicals, meaning that others, perhaps from medicines and illegal drugs etc. are frequently entered into the mix⁴. Combined with pesticides or veterinary medicines, microplastics (found in sludge or composts), industrial chemicals and those from personal care products, are creating what has been dubbed as a “chemical cocktail”⁵, which is devastating non-human nature and having unknown effects on humans too.

Many potentially dangerous or life-altering effects of these chemicals are not being identified, let alone screened and then treated⁶. Along with keeping ecosystems in some sort of balance or equilibrium, this water is then consumed. Either in everyday domestic human use, or industrial processes. Whether that be in food production; cleaning and watering of plants, consumption by livestock, as an ingredient, or in manufacturing or energy production, to be used for cooling, heating or cleaning, and much more. In fact, it is essentially impossible for any of the infrastructure referenced in this issue to function without the use of water, but its management, its security, its health, has entered a period of acute crisis, which has implications for us all. This is particularly concerning because, as water becomes increasingly scarce it also becomes harder to predict and control, which is no coincidence. We’re taking too much. Too much is being lost and this contributes to global heating, which then returns in almost yearly record-breaking downpours – floods – or disappears for long periods of intense heat – drought – which have devastating effects on human health, livelihoods, infrastructure and everything else.

However, whether the source of pollution is agriculture or water companies, whether it is scarce because of leaks in the system, or over-abstraction, it is the result of de-regulation and non-regulation.

The Worker

From the perspective of the worker in the environmental regulator, it doesn’t feel like there’s a lack of regulation. It feels like you’re doing something, or more often, too much. Plus, there’s thousands of you. Tens of thousands of you, if you count all of the environmental regulator workers in Britain. Further still, the organisation that you work for tells you that things are going well. Very well. Not only are we doing a lot – as the daily comms or calls suggest – but we’re innovating, leading the way, all of the time. And it doesn’t feel like there’s no regulation. Especially if you deal in issuing permits, answering phones or dishing out notices to rogue waste sites. There’s loads of regulations. Tonnes. Maybe too many.

But as is often the case, there is a state of cognitive dissonance. Workers for the environmental regulator see one thing, but are told and can believe another. Or, they don’t see it at all. It’s as typical to come across a policy maker or scientist, hugely motivated by their chosen field or the state of the climate, as it is to come across an operational worker, in the field or on the phones, who wants a quiet life, a stable job and better-than-average holiday leave. The environment means as much to them as the next person. But any one of them can return home, if they wish, safe in the knowledge that they did something for the greater good of “the environment” that day.

The workforce is large and a peculiar mix, its consciousness as eclectic as its regulatory portfolio. There are many different incentives. People are motivated by different things. As well as being a scientific advisor to government, the organisation is an advisor to and regulator of industry, an enforcer against crime, an emergency responder and licenser of recreational activity. As such, socially, the workforce is drawn from multiple classes. There are working class field workers, administrators, phone handlers, and to a lesser degree, enforcement or regulatory people, who swiftly enter a new class position by virtue of higher pay, professionalisation or technical specialisation, and almost have a “protected” status in the organisation. From amongst the middle classes – which are by far the largest group and collection of grades – there are scientists, civil engineers, project managers, policy wonks, an army of public relations professionals, business managers, analysts, regulators and enforcers. From amongst these layers, often (with a few exceptions), the majority of senior management is drawn. Graduates, who may hail from middle class backgrounds, can enter the organisation in the lower grades, but are able to navigate and move upwards quite quickly due to longstanding recruitment and retention issues. For the working class graduates, there’s less mobility – a slower process of navigation, incorporation and assimilation – but often a scientific background can help you cut through. But beggars can’t be choosers these days, and due to low pay (or even a dearth of technical expertise in the wider workforce) there will be something for you. Although, it does help if you’re white, middle-class and consider yourself some sort of environmentalist. The organisation is very “white”, though that is gradually changing due to legitimately proactive company schemes, but it definitely does not reflect the social basis of Britain, which is an issue which broadly tracks with the wider sector too. What continues to prevail, though, is a hegemonic ideology of environmentalism, which comes with a great deal of paternalistic but socially “progressive” attitudes towards both the environment and communities. This is sometimes overt, or covert, and is in the subtext of our activity: People and places are to be managed, because we know what’s best for them.

Technically, many of the roles work to different rhythms.

Inspections, sampling and maintenance usually takes place in daylight core hours by ecologists, industry regulators and operational staff, who work out of depots or labs in the near-hinterland of the rural provinces. In all cases, it is seasonal. Either due to the meteorological seasons, which are in great flux and changing due to the climate, or due to regulatory and legislative requirements e.g. X amount of inspections must be conducted according to X date. To greater or lesser degrees, these workers spend time out in the field in gangs, working alone, or with partner organisations. It can sometimes be very dangerous work and in recent years, environmental workers have died due to slips and falls, and routinely fall ill due to the accidental inhalation or ingestion of toxic chemicals.⁷

Permitting, business planning, analysis of data, policy work, comms or customer support is largely office or home-based, and carried out by an array of advisors, technical specialists, administrators and professionals. While much of this work will be carried out according to various deadlines – which are increasing in number and coming about more quickly due to demands on resources, the environment and political pressures – they have a “circadian rhythm” about them. These staff tend to enjoy a greater deal of flexibility in their work e.g. adjusted, flexible or reduced hours: an offset and concession made by the business after the pandemic and years of stagnant pay metabolised worker demands and the employers need to keep pay low, but reward and adapt into a policy. Staff can work in the dawn or dusk hours, providing they’re in for a substantial part of the day. They can reduce or compress hours to deal with home pressures, caring responsibilities or just to enjoy a better work/life balance.

However, emergency or incident response – much like a strike – is the great leveller.

Workers from all social and technical backgrounds might hold an incident role – typically suited to their specialism – and can be deployed when an environmental event e.g. flooding, waste fires, pollution spills etc. trigger the incident structures to “scale up” and respond. This could be anything from officers taking sampling, operations workers deploying temporary flood barriers or admin staff operating incident rooms to coordinate resources. Every incident is different, even in respect to flooding, but often always largely relies on a paid voluntary force, who receive internal training and take turns to stand by on rosters. There are permanent incident staff, but there aren’t many of them and in recent years there has been talk of making the incident spine more “permanent”. This is because as impacts from climate change and environmental degradation become more acute there are almost constant incidents to respond to which keeps the organisation in a constantly reactive, attritional state, coming at the detriment of more proactive “business as usual” activity. Secondly, in the past, incident response has been a point of leverage for the trade unions - withdrawing from rosters has been used effectively as an action short of strike. It has also historically been based on a lot of “good will”, which has been eroded by poor pay and treatment over time. It is no surprise then that since the first strikes over pay in the organisation’s history, the business has made incident response “contractually mandatory” for new starters. I don’t work for the organisation any more so have not observed the effects of this first-hand, but I understand that this press ganging into incident duties is being both over and under utilised in “area” and “national”. But there is an understated effect of incident work too, which is that, much like the strike, there is no feeling like it. Working incidents, like standing on picket lines, has a galvanising effect, which captures, inherently contains and generates an array of quite powerful emotional and ideological drivers. Many colleagues working for the organisation often have an instinctive sense of duty towards the public and the environment – the organisation is full of fantastic people – so planning or deploying resources to keep communities safe, evacuating homes and liaising with distressed communities can be a profound experience, contributing to a sense of purpose and identity, which is personally “character-building” too.

The Union

This should also be space that the recognised unions step into, but they either don’t see it as their role or are not geared up to do it. Unison, the public sector union and Britain’s largest union, is by far the largest union in the organisation and has reasonably good coverage and density with “regional” branches across all of the operational areas of the employer. Prospect, a union for professionals, is the second biggest by some way and is organised by one national branch.

I’ve had a good deal of contact with both unions and have been a member of them both at different times. The composition of Prospect’s membership base broadly tracks with its reputation and the way it positions itself; it is a union for professionals, behaves more like an association and has a very liberal outlook, but has struck and been more on the front foot than Unison at times. Unison is a union for all workers in public service and, as a result, has a broader membership base and a different character. It has also struck and is generally seen as ‘The Union’.

In the recent dispute over pay during the strike wave, when Prospect decided to pause and negotiate, Unison’s membership voted to continue industrial action. As a result, the employer put together a special pay case for No.10, which was signed off and workers achieved more. That being said, it didn’t reverse an approx. 40% deduction in below-inflation pay and it was felt by some that the union leadership was looking for the “off ramp” long before, and tried to sell the deal to members. Like Prospect, Unison’s reputation precedes it. There has generally been wide-spread disenchantment with the unions in the past– Unison in particular – for not living up to the expectation of those members who are more engaged in the union’s business and generally have a more militant outlook. Part of the blame lies with Unison’s deliberate focus on ‘servicing’ its members rather than ‘organising’ them, which has led to it prioritising professional conduct and individual representation which creates endless bureaucratic processes that often favour employers. Any memory it might have had for traditional forms of shop floor organising have long been lost and in many respects this is now its “identity”.

Although many activists – even some branches – believe that this is enough, others don’t. I understand that many – two branches in particular – have enjoyed a relative recruitment “boom” since the industrial action, but for the most part they are prevailing over consistently declining memberships and the voluntary stewards are stretched, balancing multiple cases, and overworked. This contributes to a sort of frenzied siege mentality, which, combined with an agreement that doesn’t allow time for “trade union activity”, ensures that the bare basics are not done, so TU visibility is low. There isn’t the sense that they don’t want to “organise”, however, just that they have no experience of it or don’t see the value. And organising takes time, which the Branch stewards can often ill afford, for a) this is inward facing (classed as TU activity – see above) and b) there are no Unison lay members on full time release incl. Branch Secretaries and the agreement with the employer is not generous. However, a Branch steward told me that this can work in their favour, as good stewards can enjoy a good reputation and this can cultivate a sense of trust and respect with members. They are not removed from the workplace, they hold incident roles or are seen in meetings or at depots just like everyone else, and are not seen as separate or apart.

This is very much seen as being normal in the environmental regulator as there is often no identification or relationship with the broader trade union (or any social) movement, and there is a lack of trade union “identity”. There is often not the typical rhetoric – the little rituals or actions which signal that they are speaking in a “tradition”. This, I don’t think, is a problem and actually presents an opportunity; there is a “remaking” to be done, through deed, rather than cos-playing legacy ideologies and antiquarian practices. Activists are reps because they recognise the value in having a union. That being said, there are good habits and customs which have also been lost, whether that be minute-taking, regular comms, or an inherent sense of political purpose. Purpose, along with conception of or participation in the union democracy, and any sense of agency, as conscious practices, are wider, deeper trends which cannot find determination in a single union context. However, the discarding, absence of, and retreat from democracy as part of the workplace organisational form has contributed to the general perception that there are clear limits and that the union is essentially an insurance plan: you pay your dues and you are serviced accordingly. The disillusionment experienced when a decision doesn’t go the way that you think it should is just chalked up as another unfortunate and unchangeable thing. This continually reproduces rigid and mysterious structures of leadership, where decisions are made by apparently no one in particular and there can be no accountability.

The above, of course, is not unusual. Many of the big unions are criticised for being timid and conciliatory when they shouldn’t be, and for dampening or even betraying the ambition of workers. It appears that this is especially pronounced in some unions for workers in certain sectors in or adjacent to the state. Sometimes they may have greater leverage by withdrawing their labour, but there is a ceiling for their demands as it is paid for by “public” money, so less bargaining power and a different, more corporatist role in mediating industrial relations. Often, it is impressed on the leaders of the unions – negotiators, senior elected or unelected officials etc. – that they share the responsibility in the smooth running of their part of the state. For many, even the “radicals”, this is not an undesirable or unalluring task. Along with a sense of status that goes with this role – being at the top table, having important conversations with important people – there is also the fact that the Left’s imagination for how things could be done doesn’t extend much further beyond a massive, monolithic, paternal state.

It appears that, increasingly, Unison is prepared to step into a more political space and advocate for certain models of structure and governance for both water companies and their regulators, driven by motions at conference, but they are quite conventional demands e.g. nationalisation, resourcing and centralising⁸. This, compared to the current dynamic of dysfunction and de-regulation is obviously a more favourable option, but these have come about during the latter-days of the Tories reign and shortly before this Labour government came to power. No doubt, these motions are passed with the express purpose of “wishful thinking” e.g. outsourcing politics to Parliament and using the famously effective and responsive “Labour Link” to lobby for and deliver this Keynesian utopia. Which is what these proposals are, for they won’t be delivered and are also not what is needed to see the results for the environment and people that we want to see. The dysfunction, while intensified by cuts, deregulation, and privatisation, is deeper.

The Water

Water outlines the shape and reveals the depths of dysfunction.

It’s true that cuts have had a serious operational impact on the organisation and that they have been “weaponised” against it to undermine its independence.⁹ In the case of water, inspections of sites (agriculture or utility) and monitoring of water bodies dropped off a cliff after 2010 and did not return to normal until the water quality crisis had become a national scandal, which forced a new financial settlement. During this period, enforcement action disappeared,¹⁰ but “ring-fenced” funding for the organisation’s role as a planner and emergency responder to flood risk was secured. So, the overall budget expanded, because several big floods devastated communities and required resounding, politically popular solutions in key heartland constituencies.

De and re-regulation further complicate the mess. At the point when Con-Dem policies of privatisation and “growth” began to take full effect, the country left the European Union (EU). There was also an explosion of climate consciousness forced in the British context by middle class environmentalists XR. New statutory requirements incl. headline environmental targets – EU legacy legislation – were established in UK law due (in part) to public pressure in those same heartlands, while greater power was centralised in government and other regulations were cut, unleashing the private sector on services.

Then comes The Pandemic, grinding projects to a halt, having unknown effects on the climate, and preceding a period of inflation, which forced the costs of construction, living, and labour upwards. As we emerge out of our homes and into this “new normal”, greater time is spent appreciating nature, bringing people into contact with the devastating effects of pollution in England’s rivers, and making them sick and angry. The crisis becomes a national scandal. The result of all this, on the environmental regulator, is new and increased responsibilities, under immense pressure: increasingly relying on and delivered by parasitic outsourced providers. While adequately funded for some work that it is well behind on (for reasons beyond its control), overall, the regulator is unbalanced because cuts have come at the cost of other services. The workforce is poorer and stretched, and, as a result, leave in droves to the private sector, settle for an early retirement or strike, hampering delivery, and contributing to a vacancy churn. Not only this, but also increasingly fatigued by the constant pivots as it reels from crisis to crisis and its independence has been undermined. For a good period of time before I left, it felt like the organisation was rudderless and drifting, stalled, by constant new governments and an unfortunately-timed change in senior leadership.

All of this time, the situation for the environment and infrastructure intensifies and becomes more apparent. The organisation is not able to meet its target of maintaining 98% of its high consequence flood defences (which protect the most properties) at their required condition, falling short by approximately 5%, and exposing more than 200,000 properties to increased risk.¹¹ Not a single reservoir for capturing and storing water is built or progressed in any meaningful sense, meaning that the government will not have built a single new major reservoir between 1991 and 2029, while approximately 51 litres of water per person per day is being lost to leaks: the majority occurring from pipes owned by private water companies.¹² With population increases and consumer behaviour unchanged, demand for water will outstrip supply in the next 20 years.¹³ Further still, there are huge infrastructural blindspots, whereby transference of water from saturated areas to others that are almost permanently under “stress” is near impossible.

To inspect and fix assets, construct new reservoirs, and replace Victorian pipes pissing out precious water with a view to transfer it instead requires a huge amount of coordination and capital. One might naively think that a small cartel of large uncompetitive companies, making pre-tax profits of approximately £1.7 billion a year, would be well situated to do this.¹⁴ Instead, they have lined their pockets, paying out approximately £78 billion in dividends to shareholders¹⁵, of which the pension fund for the environmental regulator is one.¹⁶ Such an arrangement, which is deeply unpopular with workers in the regulator, means that they are directly implicated in and incentivised by the exploitation of the environment for which they dedicate their working lives to prevent. Further still, this entangles them in the fortunes of the companies themselves, for divestment could mean their collapse as the sector is vulnerable to the market, which is an extreme possibility, as in the case of Thames Water, which has racked up around £14.7bn of debt and is near bankruptcy.¹⁷

Around 20%, or 20p for every pound paid by customers, goes to servicing the industry’s £60.3bn debt mountain.¹⁸ As it grows taller, the need to increase the rate of exploitation in labour, raw material, rents (bills) and sunk capital in assets does too. Although natural attrition due to a majority of water workers nearing retirement age alongside a national skills shortage appears to have somewhat done the job for them, there is a deep contradiction between what the sector needs and what it can provide. Essentially, though, the water companies are holding the country at ransom by maintaining the delusion of water scarcity until, because of their wastefulness and destruction, it becomes a real and acute crisis of scarcity.

The Land

It is impossible to talk about water, without talking about land. Much of this is common-sense: water enters rivers or seas via the land, and its topology or saturation rate influences the quantity or velocity entering the body, and, as such, its shape, volume and flow. Land brings with it many pollutants; fuel from roads, sewage from combined overspills, chemicals sprayed on fields or nutrients from overloaded soil. This water is captured for storage or abstracted and drank by the consumer, or used by industry in processes for agriculture, construction or energy production. Any ecologist or hydrologist will tell you that there’s good reason to study land in it’s own right, but none would deny water and land’s inter-relatedness: for flood risk, for good soil health, for supply, biodiversity, lower water treatment costs, or health benefits etc. - the list goes on and on.

But then one might sensibly ask: if the two are inextricably linked, then why are they often treated as being separate and distinct? The answer is: private property. It will be of no surprise to any reader of Notes from Below that the practical, scientific, or common-sense relationship between water and land has little bearing on regulatory outcomes. A greater quantity, better supplied, or higher quality of water is contingent on who owns and controls it and why.

According to research by Guy Shrubsole – author of Who Owns England – just 1% of the population own half of the land in England, with the aristocracy or landed gentry still owning around a third.¹⁹ A good deal of this is agricultural land as approx. 67% of land is worked in England.²⁰ This could be for arable crops (such as vegetables, fruits or cereals), for livestock (sheep, cattle, chickens or pigs etc.), or for growing non-edible crops (flowers and plants). Although according to some research approx. 14,500 hectares of productive land (less than 1%) has been “lost” to development since 2010,²¹ and there is an incentive for some smaller farmers and landowners, usually on the edges of towns or cities, to sell up for developers: there are greater incentives for them to hold on to the land. For the price of land – as sure as dawn breaking and night falling is a constant – it appreciates. And this ensures, for the largest landowners, the maintenance of power and generational wealth.

The number of small farms (under 100 hectares) has decreased by half in the last 60 years and the number of small holdings have also decreased, from approx. 160,000 in 1950 to less than 30,000 in 2020.²² In the UK, 18% of farms are now “large farms” and they control over 73.6% of farmland.²³ Similarly in other areas of agriculture, these figures represent a clear trend of monopolisation by larger family-run enterprises or corporate-entities. Many farmers face tight margins and many of them are essentially unprofitable (the “average farm” makes 13 times more from subsidies than they do from agriculture²⁴), but there’s a good deal of money swilling about in the agri-food sector. £146.7 billion, in fact.²⁵ And as a sector which employs around 470,000 people,²⁶ it would be wrong to focus on the tiny minority – the landowners – too much, but the reality is that if you own the land, you own the water.
Private property rights grant landowners a huge amount of freedom on how they use the land, especially that land which is not protected or does not have special status. And while there is no absolute right to develop land, it’s not stopping many rural or semi-rural developments being built on flood plains, exposing these homeowners to risk of flooding, but also contributing to higher flood risk for others downstream or adjacent to them because it changes the surface topology of the land, with less water being absorbed or stored and more being directed to sewers, which can get overloaded more quickly. In turn, this forces water companies to spill, destroying the ecology of whichever water body they’re discharging into, which might be a river and is likely to be the property of a large landowner. Riparian ownership – if a water course runs “through, beneath or adjacent” to your land – comes with rights and responsibilities. The main responsibilities include allowing the water to run freely, controlling any invasive species or maintaining assets, such as culverts or weirs, but if you’re a landowner, you have the right to protect your property from flooding and for the water to flow in its “natural quantity and quality”.²⁷

As ever, there are many good, responsible “riparian owners”, who seek consent or support for activity, want to improve and manage the quality or quantity of water for themselves, the environment and their community. These are usually small businesses and homeowners, but the abuses clearly far outweigh any success stories. For “industry”, the legal requirement falls on everyone and no one. A voluntary incentives-based system of regulation, tilted to favour “growth” over environmental outcomes, and the sacred, essential, under-pinning role of private property ensures no meaningful change.

Finding out exactly who is responsible is often a difficult, if not impossible, task for those workers in the environmental regulator who are seeking improvements, partnership or redress. The largest landowners historically parcel out their land and let to tenant farmers or businesses to secure rents. This ensures their generational immutability in the ruralities, maintaining their class position, and absolving them of responsibility. ‘Who has responsibility for doing what’ is actually pretty clear, but becomes complex if you’re dealing with half a dozen tenants and a shadowy corporate enterprise or family trust, operating out of the Jersey Islands, mediated by environmental consultants or lawyers. These complex arrangements don’t stop the landowner from cashing in on natural capital hand-outs from the state, of course, but it can stall bank maintenance, accelerate the spread of infections amongst a population of protected species, or halt ambitious, large-scale natural flood management projects in crucial upstream ‘catchments’.

The ‘catchment-based approach’ is a relatively new innovation from Defra and nearly everyone who deals in water maintains that it is indeed that: an innovation. A catchment is a geographic area defined naturally by surface water hydrology and is, in Defra’s words, the natural scale to consider this aspect of the environment. Further, they say: “the water environment is affected by every activity that takes place on land as well as through our actions in abstracting, using and returning water to rivers, the sea and the ground.”²⁸ Taking this approach, which links land and water, aims to consider all aspects, including communities or other stakeholders in decision-making to shape River Basin Management Plans, where holistic actions can be progressed and delivered. This is exactly what we should be doing and what environmental workers want to do, but comes up against the obvious tension with land ownership, which sees land and water separated out, and is made even more difficult or complex in the urban environment. Landowners or businesses are not short of bodies or associations to have a seat at the table and represent their interests, whether they be trade associations or even Internal Drainage Boards²⁹, but communities, let alone the working class, don’t have that. Local Flood Forums and other such bodies fill a gap and do a good, often essential job, but they’re specialised, sometimes accused of being talking shops for middle-class people with more time on their hands, and serve a role in directing anger and organic radicalism back towards and into state systems or structures.

This process of “recuperation” is essential in managing expectations down, maintaining the status quo and has been criticised by water campaigners. The large and vocal campaigns of the last few years are, in-part, borne of a frustration with this very system. After having no luck in persuading the responsible agencies through the “legitimate” fora to do so, the most motivated or incensed disconnected, went on to form local groups and made their voices heard in the media. Which is not an option for everybody. It is no mistake that the campaign around sewage in our rivers has been (somewhat) successful and is also primarily a middle class, rural movement, which is led by eNGOs and involves the sympathetic, vocal support of media personalities and some large, philanthropic landowners too.

The Solutions

The harnessing of water unleashed the industrial revolution – and by proxy – the British Empire and capitalist imperialism upon the world. There is some sad, but nonetheless poetic justice in the fact that water’s undoing promises to bring the demise of all this too. The issue of who commands the water has determined many of the more significant historical events to shape the conditions we struggle in today; whether that be via the Roman aqueduct, a Song rice paddy, frigates flying the Red Duster, or the Panama Canal. Inevitably, its command is reducible to whoever has the pointiest sticks, but only when it can constitute as a resource in viable, ideal or required territory. The advent of private property simplified, but obscured this fact. Water’s subsequent appropriation, commodification and relentless exploitation, has meant that the question of whoever can command the water now is moot. The answer is: no-one.

It’s hard not to take comfort in the idea that water will be here if this civilizational journey passes into a long night, and in its equal place amongst the Earth’s systems, can cohere and systematise again. But this prospect, whilst feeling inevitable under the current trajectory, is only still a possibility. And if it is not to be prevented, it can be mitigated and we should be fighting against it, nonetheless. Mitigation of the worst effects requires water to be brought into common ownership and its command – or management – is not a question then of whether we could, but how we should. While it is clear that water must be utilised for the common good, our relationship to it must be one of association, rather than any paternalistic notions favoured now, which necessitate control and domination. That being said, global fresh water supply is due to outstrip supply by 40% by 2030,[^30 with many places (primarily in the Global South) already experiencing intense stress, and thus requiring a certain managerialism, which might be offset in the long-term by a focus on replenishing biodiversity and nature, as a whole.[^31] As one ecologist told me: “ecosystems are actually highly robust and able to cope with many changes that are thrown at them. However, the changes these ecosystems will undergo in order to maintain equilibrium will end up only hurting humans as beneficiaries of ecosystem services.” E.g we increase the amount of nutrients in a watercourse, which leads to certain types of plants to dominate (algae), so habitats for fish decrease as there are less higher plants due to competition and therefore there are no fish for human consumption. In this scenario, the ecosystem still exists, it has shifted from a higher plant dominated system to an algae system which we, as humans, benefit less from. In other words, we must work with non-human nature, or it will work against us, and by transforming nature, we transform ourselves.

To think of our futures in this way requires a seismic shift in political consciousness. The common sense of today does not obviously lend itself to thinking in these systemic, nuanced, liberatory terms. In order to do that requires a political strategy, which can translate these ideas to winnable demands, made by an appropriate political subject. There must also be a sense of interconnectedness that this aspires to and is built-in to any programme or campaign, which is a challenge to do, when so many of the working class are alienated and have no sense of instinctive connection to the natural environment. We must move humans back into the category of nature. Not in the superficial, legalistic way that the eNGO’s campaign on, but in their sense of how they experience and socially constitute the world.

Many environmental workers already have this instinctive connection and think in systemic, nuanced terms. Many others don’t. A great deal of them are anxious – or even in a state of nihilistic depression – about the effect of the changing climate. For some, it’s just a job and it fulfils other things that are more important to them, which the austerity-brained climate-reductionism of the employer favours. Fewer still perceive these issues in class terms. Nevertheless, a high-degree of voluntarism inherently exists in the environmental regulator: the workers have a social conscience and they’re awake to the consequences of environmental degradation and climate change, which to greater and lesser degrees, cuts across the class divides and can be mobilising. In respect to water, specifically, it is just another catastrophic ecological situation in a litany of other catastrophic ecological situations. There is still a need, as ever, to link these political issues to “bread and butter” demands, but these take a different shape in the environmental regulator, because there is a direct link between effective action on the climate and environment to resourcing.

The unions aren’t currently geared up to wage a campaign of this type, although I understand that there is increasing rank and file activity in the regulator that aspires to it, which is linking arms with the Unison rank and file movement ‘Time for Real Change’.³² And contrary to its perception of itself, there is actually a higher-than-average capacity for spontaneous rank and file militancy. In the last decade, there have been two occasions whereby trade union members took unofficial, unreported industrial action, which pushed the organisation and the respective unions into new, unchartered territory, and even forced some concessions. However, these mini rebellions were not conscious of themselves and were limited to single bread-and-butter issues, which did not seek to fundamentally change wider systems in the unions or employer and were markedly defensive.

Nevertheless, all of this demonstrates that there is a latent capacity for something else more ambitious than the annual cycle of tedious, lengthy and non-transparent pay negotiations which dominates official union business. Lay member activists, who have experimented with re-democratising their Unison branches and introducing other more overtly political things, report that members respond positively to it and this results in increased engagement. One Branch boasts full shop steward coverage of every major site in their patch, are developing a new workplace contact system to respond to the Working From Home trend and have adopted the slogan ‘Fighting for members and the environment’, which they suggest represents a real trend in the Branch and wider union. The extent and the potential of an ambitious campaign with an ecosocialist flavour cannot be attested to, because it has never been consciously tested at any scale. But many activists would agree that the passions of environmental regulators can be raised and there is an “anarchic” aspect to their character, which is complimentary.

Any such campaign, though, must necessarily be in and outside of the union and in and outside of the employer.

The devastating consequences of not having an effective environmental regulator and responder finds its latest expression in the surface water flooding of Valencia, Spain. There, villages on the near-peripheral hinterland were devastated by torrential rain hitting land scorched by the earth from consecutive years of drought, leading to flooding which has killed 150+ people and brought about a simmering new, still unfolding, political crisis. This is not something we should hope to see replicated in England’s context to provoke effective action, but with Labour threatening to cut the floods budget, is a distinct possibility communists and militants have to be ready to politically respond to.³³ Communities at risk of flooding from rivers and sea are very aware of what flooding means. Many have been flooded before. They know what budget cuts can equate to and they are often sympathetic to workers in this field, even if they reject their parent institution. These workers, a cross-class strata of unproductive, credentialed, sometimes highly-skilled and professionalised people, might be rejected out-of-hand by orthodox puritans on account of their Professional Managerial Class status. However, in order to effectively tackle the challenges that are emerging around and beneath us, they are essential. It is pure delusion to think otherwise.

Claims that adapting to or dealing with climate change will be a simple task once full-blooded, clear-eyed proletarians secure state power are as laughable as those which suggest that the numerous intersecting crises can be tackled by going vegan or saving rainwater. These are things that we hear. But to store and capture water, or protect communities and vital resources (such as domestic food production) against water, it requires expertise.³⁴ It also requires a state-like actor, which can command and coordinate: to transfer water, to improve the health of water, to bring salmon and invertebrates back to our water, and crack down on greedy polluters.³⁵ How that body looks and operates is worth deep and considered discussion,³⁶ not one that I want to take a stab at here, but it must essentialise democratic forms that communities are crying out for and be undertaken by environmental workers too. There is no sacred information or special knowledge that the bureaucrats hold. In fact, many communities have, out of sheer necessity, developed a collective knowledge and expertise that is astounding, and one that is in many ways superior because it is one that is lived. There is, though, just a very practical limit on this as state workers have access to resources, tools and learning which are not readily available to these communities.

Along with planning and decision-making, a democratisation of information, education and training is the only way to build true resilience so that we can adapt in a way that is organically reproductive and generational. Citizen science is already being experimented with as partnerships with eNGOs - out of necessity due to cuts - but this could be expanded and thus reducing the burden on the Taxpayer. “Communities of competence”³⁷ must be demanded as a political imperative to break patterns of dependence which regulation necessitates, as it reinforces logics of “scarcity” e.g. throttling the flow or exchange of skills or knowledge. It must also be done with the view to diminish the role and standing of “regulation” in the minds of water users, for regulation is incompatible with capitalist accumulation. That is not to say that it’s not done better elsewhere, or can’t be done better here, but due to the specificities of property relations in Britain’s context, inevitably “regulation” has to be sacrificed on the altar to keep up with multiple pressures, chiefly: low profit rates.³⁸

Necessarily then, land reform must feature as part of any dialogue and future strategy, which emphasises and deals with the social realities of the ruralities. It is not unusual to drive through a rural market town and see a regional National Farmers Union (NFU) office, with its groomed lawns and distinctive aesthetic, in a central place, standing out against a backdrop of dead, over-farmed land or the lonely decay of the high street. But while the NFU or the Country, Land and Business Association are hegemonic, they are far from universally popular, especially amongst small agriculturalists. Propertied rural reactionaries are finding other outlets for their expression, in campaigns which aim to pressure the traditional institutions and push them in new proto-fascistic directions.³⁹ Others – a distinct minority – reject them both and might be worked with. However, we shouldn’t be under any illusions or have any romantic notions about the small landowner or tenant farmer, as many aspire to be people of property and feel grievance on account of being excluded from this elite group. This includes some tenant farmers, who could be predatory land monopolists themselves and exploit masses of cheap, foreign labour.⁴⁰ But it’s plain that any mature campaign cannot neglect them, even just on account of the fact that rural propertied classes have made the downfall of many a revolution.

The unifying factor is the tremendously authoritarian and impersonal quality of private property relations, which forcibly organise, exploit and dominate both people and the environment. Whether that be through parasitic outsourced companies, who prey on dysfunction to extract maximum profits, breeding further dysfunction and making working conditions intolerable for regulatory workers; or, concentrations of corporate battery farms obliterating the health of rivers, making water undrinkable for the livestock of small farmers further downstream. Or, further still, it is the very personal, direct domination that water workers must bear witness to, or which farmworkers are subjected to in poly-tunnels, on yards and in fields, up and down the country. It is even frequently flooded communities, who can’t get home insurance, can’t move house and are kept awake at night when they hear rain start to fall.

These experiences have a shared basis and could form up a political coalition, which has the capacity to transform the situation. Within the regulator, this must start with a campaign which links climate change and environmental degradation to resources and pay. These workers have a privileged position, in-part based on their essentiality, which comes with responsibility and expectations. They are well positioned to be the central organising force to collect the varied aims of these seemingly disparate groups and unify them in a coherent and forward-facing campaign. To do so is no small feat, but the moment demands it and if they don’t, they must ask themselves: did you do everything that you could possibly do?