Clare Feeney

Unheard. Disregarded. Demoralised. Many expert environmental practitioners feel the pain of our advice constantly being ignored or watered down to a below-homeopathic strength.

We also bear the additional pain of witnessing the resulting harm to families, firms, farms and the environment – harm our advice could have avoided or minimised.

This when the World Economic Forum’s 2026 Risks Report lists extreme weather events, biodiversity loss & ecosystem collapse, and critical change to earth systems, as the top three of the ten most serious decadal threats to the global economy. With natural resource shortages and pollution coming in at numbers six and ten, fully half these decadal threats to the global economy are environmental.

So why have we ended up as a profession of Cassandras?  – like the ancient prophetess whose predictions were fated to be always right and never heeded.

How can we change this? How can we elevate the value of the environment to that of ‘The Economy’ in order to effectively tackle the known risks of the poly/meta/perma-crisis?

Now, as these crises are becoming more and more evident to all sectors of society, the theme of this 2026 conference could not be more timely. Understanding societal choices – who is choosing what, and why – is crucial.

The growing global dialogue about the wellbeing economy envisions a future where the economy is redesigned from the current one that treats people and the environment simultaneously as externalities – fodder for the economy, yet not part of it – to an economy that is in service to people and the environment.

And the collaboration between the Hydrological Society and the Rivers Group signals other opportunities to get there…. from little ripples, bigger ripples grow….