Green Roots, Growing Prosperity: Delivering resilience at Flood & Coast 2026

01 June 2026

CIWEM Early Careers President Emily Blaney explores how CIWEM's Flood & Coast Conference 2026 will bring together policy, practice and people to deliver resilient, nature-positive solutions

For years, the FCERM community has been building consensus around the need for integrated, resilient approaches to flood and coastal risk. In 2026, that consensus is being put into action. The introduction of new FCERM funding rules, alongside the refresh of the National FCERM Strategy for England, marks a moment where ambition, evidence and investment are being brought into closer alignment. Flood & Coast this year arrives at the point where policy meets practice, and where resilience must be delivered, together.

The recent publication of the Climate Change Committee’s A Well-Adapted UK report is a stark reminder of what we’re working for. UK infrastructure was built for a climate that no longer exists. Flood preparedness is cited as a key priority. Under 2°C of global warming, an average winter will be more like a wet winter today, heavy bursts of rainfall throughout the year could increase by 15-60%, and sea levels will be 25-45cm higher around the coasts than today. Our work will become more urgent and more contested - competing for finite funding, political bandwidth and land in a system under pressure from every direction. And we’ll have to do this in a landscape with a damaging narrative that tells us nature is a barrier to growth, rather than the very foundation of it.

• Read CIWEM’s comments about the Well Adapted UK report here.

At the heart of our presidential theme for this year, ‘Green Roots, Growing Prosperity’, is the challenge to that view. We want to show that the environment is not a constraint on growth, it is the condition under which sustainable growth becomes possible at. It’s not hard to demonstrate this in our sector. Flood resilience schemes don’t just protect homes; they underpin the economic viability of entire communities. Nature-based solutions, from restored floodplains to coastal saltmarshes, deliver clean water, carbon storage, and biodiversity alongside protection from extreme weather. And the numbers are unambiguous: the cost of adaptation is a fraction of the cost of inaction.

For the FCERM sector, this isn’t a new revelation. It’s what the evidence has been telling us for years. It’s what the professionals gathering in Liverpool will be demonstrating, debating, and building on across three days of some of the most important conversations in FCERM.

Flood & Coast has always been more than a conference. It’s where the FCERM community comes together. Not just to share what’s working, but to be honest about what isn’t, to forge the partnerships that turn policy into practice, and to celebrate the people doing extraordinary work often in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

What to expect at this year's event

This year, the event comes to Liverpool for the first time, from 09 - 11 June 2026, and the programme reflects both the scale of the challenge and the breadth of the community rising to meet it. We’re not just asking what good policy looks like, but how it is turned into decisions, designs and delivery on the ground.

On day one, How Integrated Water Management Plans Unlock Sustainable Growth is our Green Roots argument in practice, exploring how embedding water management into development and regeneration projects delivers tangible benefits for flood risk, climate resilience, and place-making. Delivering at Pace and Together will tackle the harder question of how water companies, local authorities, and regulators actually translate that ambition into coordinated action

On the coast, two sessions confront what may be the sector’s most uncomfortable conversation: Coastal Transition and Adaptation. The Only Game in Town and Towards a New Framework for Communities Facing Coastal Change together challenge us to rethink the metrics we use to evaluate decisions, question whether cost-benefit analysis alone is fit for purpose, and ask how we involve communities in choices that will define their futures. And for those earlier in their careers, Managing Living Infrastructure and the Project Delivery Dream Team workshop offer something equally important, the practical tools and collaborative mindset needed to deliver the resilient, nature-based solutions that the next decade will demand.

And these are just a selection of the talks I’m excited for! Whatever corner of this sector you work in - across the main hall, Critical People Skills Stage, Future of FCERM, or Technical Skills Stage, I am confident you will find something in Liverpool that will speak directly to your practice and your challenges.

Beyond the conference sessions themselves, Flood & Coast offers something that no webinar or report can replicate. The Gala Dinner and CIWEM Spotlight Awards are a chance to pause and properly celebrate the people and projects that embody everything our Green Roots theme stands for. The schemes that have delivered real economic and social value alongside environmental outcomes, and the individuals who have championed that work often without nearly enough recognition. The Flood & Coast Excellence Awards do the same for innovation and impact across the sector.

And the Women in FCERM programme continues its important work, because building the case for environmental investment also means building the diverse, representative profession that will make that case most powerfully. And if the sessions are where the ideas happen, the dinner is where the partnerships do.

CIWEM Presidential Team at Flood & Coast 2026

Both coming from an FCERM background, John and I are thrilled to be attending and playing a role in the conference this year, and as Early Careers President I’m excited we have such a strong focus on building skills. Each morning I’ll be part of a team delivering the Early Careers Networking session. It’s a session we’ve designed to help you navigate the conference, network with peers and get familiar with a helpful buddy who can support your conference experience.

On the second day, John is hosting the dragons den formatted session Inside FCERM: Exploring Careers and Emerging Skills, where six early careers professionals will showcase their roles and highlight emerging skills. On the third day, I’ll be chairing the panel From Specialist to Generalist: Building the Blended Teams of the Future, building on the discussion about what skills we might need for the future.

To deliver resilience, we also need a resilient workforce, so I’m hopeful these sessions will encourage discussions about the value of our early careers community in the long and winding road of FCERM ahead.

And of course, beyond the thrill of delivering sessions, we are most excited to reconnect with familiar faces, welcome new ones, and be inspired by the work across our sector that brings Green Roots, Growing Prosperity to life.

So if you haven’t yet booked your place, now is the time. Flood & Coast is where this community does its best collective thinking, builds important relationships, and makes the case, session by session, conversation by conversation, that investing in resilience is one of the smartest decisions a society can make.

The narrative we’re pushing back against is loud. But so are we. And every person who walks through the doors in Liverpool is part of making that argument.

I hope to see you there.

--

Book your tickets for Flood & Coast 2026. For Early Career Professionals – those in their first five years in the water or environmental sector – you can still get 50% off your Flood & Coast booking - only 100 tickets available. Claim now!

Learn more about the CIWEM Presidential Team.

Emily Blaney is CIWEM's Early Careers President 2025/2026