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Objectives for the Campaign
To have the public make recommendations about our complex water issues. The Assembly could address:
- Building public awareness and participation
- Improving water provision – organisationally and in the environment
- Improving drinking water availability, quality and usage
- Treating waste water and sewage comprehensively within the water system
- Identifying and preventing the other principal sources of water pollution
- Driving out water pollution from inland and coastal waters
- Setting standards for service provision and environmental and ecological protection
- Bringing water management, service standards and all contamination under effective oversight
- Designing regulation fit for purpose
- Providing for continued supply of clean water as we navigate a changing climate
Our campaign should:
- Bring maximum public attention to the Citizens’ Assembly on Water and how that works
- Widen awareness around the plight of all aspects of water across the UK
- Deepen engagement with the challenges and local recommendations and solutions
- Develop recommendations to fix the whole shit-show
- Create maximum popular pressure for government action on the recommendations
- Empower citizens in stewardship of our water
- Demonstrate the potency of people-powered decision-making to resolve water issues
The Campaign
The campaign should comprise an alliance of water campaigning and environmental groups and individuals, as well as deliberative democracy experts. It should create a new shared identity (suggestion is Water Pressure) and organise under that.
The Alliance will form a campaign oversight group, which will mandate, contract and monitor a professional campaign team to deliver the Citizens’ Assembly on Water and champion its recommendations until we have a response from the government.
The campaign needs to:
- Define a campaign plan, including:
- Political expertise to frame all activity in a wider context
- a target date for the Citizens’ Assembly and
- targets towards achieving that outcome
- Define campaign and Assembly budget targets
- Agree and appoint campaign team members to roles
- Define the optimum level of public support for the Citizens’ Assembly and sustain it
- Include members whose sole responsibility is to liaise with and respond to grassroots and community submissions
- Obtain the funds with which to support the Campaign Team and hold the Assembly
- Commission opinion polling throughout the campaign to demonstrate consistent levels of public support
- Use public support to ensure the UK Government implements the unadulterated recommendations
- Commission the Assembly
- Broadcast expert testimonies from the Assembly in real time, show deliberative conversations after the Assembly and stay with the campaign until we get the Government’s response
- [If negative] explore escalatory options
If (1) the required funding and/or (2) sufficient public support are not achieved in the timeframes defined, the campaign is terminated. If that happens, it may be possible to agree to redirect funds raised to a parallel campaign, e.g. Rights of Rivers?
If there is the public support and funding to hold the Citizens’ Assembly, but a government commitment to respond is not forthcoming, there needs to be an alternative plan. This circumstance must be evaluated before going ahead with the Citizens’ Assembly. The Alliance needs to agree in advance its responses to possible outcomes.
The campaign should provide for and use regular opinion polling to measure public support levels throughout campaigning for the Citizens’ Assembly, during the Assembly and afterwards, until there is a credible response to the recommendations.
Water Pressure Landing Page 