CIWEM President’s Opening Address: A Fresh Water Future Conference 2025

02 December 2025

A summary of the opening address at A Fresh Water Future Conference 2025, delivered by CIWEM president John Curtin

The very fact that this room is full of people from all parts of this sector, with a wide span of perspectives, tells you something important – we all want the same thing in the end: a water environment that makes us proud, rather than apologetic.

That shared destination is what gives me real hope today.

Where are we as a nation in November 2025? We are at a pivotal moment.

We have just lived through another dry spring and summer that reminded every household how precious water is. We have seen more evidence than we ever needed that many of our rivers, lakes and chalk streams are in trouble. And yet – and this is the crucial ‘yet’ – we have also seen more movement in the past sixteen months than in the previous sixteen years.

A £104 billion investment settlement — the largest ever. An Independent Water Commission up and running. The Water (Special Measures) Act on the statute book. New powers, new money, new political focus.

These are not small things. They are the platform we asked for in our report in 2024, and they have been delivered faster than most of us dared expect. The forthcoming white paper will be critical in moving us from reviews to action. So let me start by saying thank you — to Ministers, to officials, and to everyone in this room who lobbied, advised, and sometimes shouted, to make those things happen.

But platforms are for building on, not for standing still. We know the job is nowhere near complete. That is why we are here: to work out together how we take the next – even tougher – steps.

And that can feel daunting, so let me offer you a now mostly forgotten figure from history to give us all some inspiration on that journey. This story comes from Winchester.

Julianna de la Floude's story

In 1299, Juliana was a laundress living in Winchester. She ran a small business washing clothes in the Upper Brook in the city. Her downstream neighbour was one of the richest and most powerful men in the city: John de Tytynge, merchant, mayor, and a very big fish indeed. John didn’t like a washer woman’s water flowing past his property, so he tried to block her access to the brook.

Julianna refused to be intimidated. The case went all the way to the King’s court at the Great Hall in Winchester. And there King Edward I issued a ruling that I hope will resonant with you today: "l’eau est commune a tout le monde" – "water is common to all". And he went further, "nor hides being tanned nor sheepskins nor blood nor waste of humans or animals nor entrails should be allowed." No mention of wet wipes, you’ll note!

Julianna – an ordinary working woman with no wealth or status – forced the richest man in Winchester to back down, and in doing so she gave England its first statutory principle of environmental protection. That principle helped shape the UN Convention on Human Rights centuries later and is still cited in environmental cases today.

So when we sit here in 2025 worrying about sewage, nutrients, abstraction, or new housing, we are not inventing the idea that water must be kept clean and available for everyone. We are simply trying to live up to a standard set by a laundress from Winchester 726 years ago.

Today, we have more tools than Julianna could ever have dreamed of: science, data, engineering, finance, law, and – most importantly – each other.

So, what can we do?

My ask of everyone in this room is simple: let’s channel our inner Julianna.

Let’s have the conversations – sometimes the difficult ones – with honesty and respect. Let’s find the win-win solutions that allow farmers to make a living and rivers to recover. Let’s design the homes and communities we need in ways that store and clean water rather than shed it. Let’s spend that £104 billion not just wisely, but imaginatively – on green infrastructure, catchment partnerships, and proper maintenance, as well as new pipes and treatment works.

If we do this together – government, regulators, companies, landowners, local councils, and citizens – then this Parliament, this decade, can become the moment when Britain finally turned the corner on water.

We can be the generation that hands our children rivers they can swim in without a second thought, chalk streams that flow clear again, and a water environment that once more becomes a source of pride rather than apology.

Julianna did it with nothing but persistence and a sense of justice. Imagine what we can do with everything we have.

Now let’s get to work.

JPC

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• Read A Fresh Water Future report, updated for 2025.
• Learn more about CIWEM's 2025/26 Presidential Theme.

John Curtin is visiting professor at the University of Southampton, and CIWEM's President