Stewardship and the city 

Policy & engagement manager Catherine Moncrieff explores the ‘software’ for water smart, climate resilient communities and the importance of good stewardship.

When thinking about climate resilient cities of the future, the mind is often drawn to its physical elements. These might include water efficient buildings, infrastructure that reduces flood risk, and nature-based features such as rain gardens and pavement trees that absorb and filter rainfall, reducing the impacts of excess surface water, droughts, heat and pollution. These nature-based features provide habitat for wildlife as well as making future cities attractive and inspiring places to live and work.  

But achieving truly resilient cities and a sustainable water future will require more than just the provision of infrastructure and the resources it provides. The  ‘software’ is needed too. Resilience and sustainability requires us to care for infrastructure and resources with the future in mind. It requires a focus on long-term place-making rather than short-term planning and quick returns. Water should be considered as a treasured resource, stored and used wisely to secure future water supplies. In other words, it requires ‘stewardship’.

Enabling Water Smart Communities

According to the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, ‘Stewardship is holding something in trust for another generation. A good steward leaves it in a better condition than they found it.’  

Ofwat Innovation project ‘Enabling Water Smart Communities’ (EWSC) is contributing to this vision. The project is a partnership of water companies, development sector organisations, and research institutions focused on community practices.  

A water smart community combines physical assets such as Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) or water reuse schemes with the equally important ‘software’. Water is central to the design of a water smart community. It’s a place where people are empowered to use water wisely and with care for the environment, underpinned by the principles of water stewardship.  

Exploring stewardship 

There are a wide range of stewardship definitions, interpretations and models that could be applied in relation to water smart communities.  

The ‘discovery phase’ of EWSC explored these different perspectives around water stewardship alongside case studies. The insights gleaned are shared in a series of  ‘insight articles’ hosted on the project’s Medium site.
‘Rethinking Stewardship’, an article by Arup, gives a high level overview of some of the concepts, challenges and opportunities around stewardship. The article draws out three principles that are shaping our understanding of stewardship in relation to water smart communities: 

• Principle 1: Building cultures of awareness, care and respect for the water cycle and a collective sense of responsibility towards water as a common good. 

• Principle 2: Governance of resources and assets that restore, protect and enhance the water environment and underpin public health, safety and resilience. 

• Principle 3: Delivering wider socio-cultural, economic and environmental outcomes through collaborative, intergenerational stewardship of water cycle assets. 

Water as a common good: harnessing benefits for multiple beneficiaries

The article by Dark Matter Labs, ‘mitigating water-related risks through integrated asset management’ explains how managing, coordinating and maintaining shared resources and water-related assets such as SuDS, creates multiple benefits for a large number of actors. These common benefits need to be properly understood, valued, captured and aligned across these multiple actors. 

Dark Matter Lab’s article ‘how to implement and benefit from a multi-value flow in local communities’ looks deeper into the flow of social, economic and environmental benefits to a wide range of beneficiaries and risk holders. It highlights the following enablers:  

• Alignment around a common target to foster shared ownership and collective action and investment;  

• Methods to ensure benefits are identified and captured in way that encourages active engagement and accountability from beneficiaries;  

• Processes that catalyse local communities to experience benefits, thereby harnessing their capabilities. 

Governance to foster collaborative action

Resilient and sustainable urban water management requires multiple organisations undertaking collaborative action - public authorities, housing developers, water sectors and communities.  

As part of the EWSC Discovery Phase, Dark Matter Labs undertook a series of interviews with key stakeholders and found that organisations not only felt overburdened by the breadth and scope of transition challenges, but individually they had limited capacity and capabilities to deal with them. There was also felt to be a lack of clarity around who bears responsibility where there are emerging risks that affect multiple stakeholders. 

A governance model which ensures coordination, collective decision-making and accountability is needed to navigate these challenges.  

Dark Matter Lab’s article, ‘mitigating water resources through integrated asset management’ proposes a potential governance model, a Common Asset Trust, that serves to manage common assets and resources among multiple stakeholders, leading to the creation of mutual benefits. It is a peer-governed revenue model that ensures collective accountability for the outcomes and benefits.  

The article looks at case studies of this type of approach, including the Colorado Water Trust and Solar Commons community energy transition, hosted by the Minnesota Design Centre. The case studies share common attributes which are detailed in the article.   

Forming groups of trusts at a city or landscape scale means that implementation and outcomes can be coordinated efficiently; it can also encourage investment.  

Fostering community ownership

Other articles by Dark Matter Labs, ‘enhancing stewardship and decision-making for sustainable water management’ and ‘mitigating water-related risks through local stewardship explain’ explain how active community engagement in water-related assets promotes a sense of ownership and responsibility among community members – i.e. local-centred stewardship. It leads to effective, long-term asset management, mitigation of water-related risks and the achievement of a wider range of positive social, environmental and economic outcomes. Several examples are cited including green infrastructure at King’s Cross in London, the Dartmoor Headwaters Project and the Eddington Project. 

A Community Land Trust (CLT) serves as a successful community-led stewardship mechanism. It involves active asset management, with strong involvement and contributions from the local community, fostering a sense of ownership and control over local resources. The ability of CLTs in providing additional wider benefits, including health and well-being, has been proven by numerous pieces of research.  

The article identifies of series of components for maximising benefits from community-led stewardship including:  

• Developing a clear and unified organisational purpose and identity
• Promoting the interconnected impact of nature’s function and acknowledging any cultural significance to strengthen community ties and;

• Creating multiple business portfolios to ensure the community’s financial resilience. 

Water companies as agents of stewardship and community wealth creation

Water companies can act as more effective water stewards by working through governance structures and partnerships which include a plurality of local stakeholders – for example by enabling local community and ‘anchor’ representatives to shape and influence water company operations as non-executive directors.  

An article from CLES, ‘place-based stewardship in other sectors’ explores a number of case studies, drawing out learning for water companies in terms of innovative ways of partnership working and alternative models of governance and ownership. 

Several further articles from CLES explore the concept of water companies as ‘anchor institutions’ that create community wealth. Anchor institutions are large public, commercial and social sector organisations that are rooted in their local place by way of their mission and history of physical assets – they are typically organisations such as local authorities, NHS trusts and universities. They are able to exert sizeable influence on the local economy through the purchase of goods and services, employment and through the deployment of land and property; they are therefore key to building community economic and social well-being. 

The article ‘water companies as placed-base anchors’ argues that water companies have a clear role as anchor institutions. ‘Shaping local economies through anchor activity’ considers practical ways in which water companies can use their roles as anchors to build community wealth.   

Good practice already exists (such as @Anglian Water’s  Alliance Partnership), but could be expanded through ‘anchor networks’ where institutions come together around a shared purpose. Such networks can coordinate and scale activities to amplify positive social, economic and environmental impacts in a distinct geography.   

Building the software for water smart and climate resilient communities and cities

The EWSC project’s stewardship workstream is drawing on these insights, and more, to explore and develop a community-led stewardship model that empowers diverse actors to adopt, operate and maintain water assets such as SuDS.  

These stewardship insights are also informing work under the project’s ‘water for people and places’ workstream, which is exploring how institutions such as water companies, developers and local authorities can together enable shared community value through local stewardship.

Author: Cat Moncrieff, policy & engagement manager - CIWEM