‘STINKERS’ Water companies’ customers could share £800m in compensation from sewage discharges lawsuit. So said THE SUN newspaper in September.
Headlines in the UK are full of shocking stories about environmental damage, and to a lesser extent the attempts being made to bring potential or actual offenders to task. Environmental protest groups such as Friends of the Earth, Just Stop Oil and Surfers Against Sewage have been prominent, but more quietly, legal challenges are also under way, drawing on a century of tradition and broad policies.
Professional environmental scientists operate across many realms – from air and water quality, to ecology and soil health, to drought and flooding issues. These issues inevitably have a strong science basis but for effective application they require an additional diverse set of skills drawn from economics and the law.
Drawing on the speaker Professor Carolyn Roberts' own experience, 2024's Burntwood Lecture explored the evolution of applied environmental science activity over the last thirty years or so, from inputs to planning policies concerned with building infrastructure such as roads, housing and waste disposal sites, through a focus on the sustainable management of drought and floodwaters, into engagement with major issues concerned with water supply and sewage disposal. There was also a consideration of the role environmental science can play in bringing potential murderers or negligent companies and individuals to justice. Carolyn also discussed the potential of competition law to address problems of privatised monopolies with damaging environmental impacts, with the first landmark lawsuit currently in progress following public uproar over sewage disposal into England’s waterways.
