Resilient Catchment Communities (RCC) is a collaborative project and approach in community monitoring of river resilience and building capacity and capability in the design, implementation and monitoring of community-led Nature Based Solutions (NBS) to deliver Integrated Catchment Management (ICM).
The project will see increases in community understanding of river resilience and the creation of key NBS demonstration sites across Cornwall so that communities, farmers, environmental NGO’s, contractors and funders can see how the density, diversity and interconnectedness of measures can be delivered alongside sustainable food production.
These NBS features are designed to reverse the simplification and speed up drainage patterns where after rainfall, water leaves our catchments quick and dirty causing flooding, pollution and at a later point drought, compared to a resilient system, where water leaves slow and clean.
Whilst the project draws on several organisations to help steer the project, such as the Environment Agency and the Cornwall and Tamar Catchment Partnerships, it is delivered through a tri-partite group of Westcountry Rivers Trust, University of Plymouth and Duchy College.
The aim of this grouping is to provide a virtual and physical platform to communicate and train people and communities on how river resilience (both water quantity and quality) is impacted by the built, farmed and natural assets upstream and how NBS can be designed and deployed alongside multiple drivers such as food and energy production.
The project will work on six sites spread across Cornwall to develop this initiative so that the Westcountry Rivers Trust can showcase how the density, diversity and interconnectedness of NBS required can be delivered alongside their farm business model.
More information – www.wrt.org.uk