British Rowing’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy wins at BASIS Sustainable Sport Awards

‘Helping our Waters Thrive’ won the Leadership Award at the British Association of Sustainable Sport’s annual awards

British Rowing launched its new Environmental Sustainability Strategy in March 2024. Entitled ‘Helping Our Waters Thrive, it’s a highly practical action plan dedicated not only to safeguarding the sport of rowing, but to preserving our environment – one of our nation’s most important resources.

Read ‘Helping Our Waters Thrive’

British Rowing’s Sustainability Lead, Rachel Dulai, said, “I was delighted to accept this sustainability Leadership Award from BASIS today. The work we’ve started doing this year is already raising awareness of the many issues surrounding poor water quality, and this award will help us to build on this further as we help our waters to thrive once more.”

Through partnering with The Rivers Trust and River Action, and being a founder member of The Clean Water Sports Alliance, British Rowing has helped to raise awareness of the issues facing our sport through poor water quality. British Rowing has worked over the past seven months to educate itself, its members and to take action to improve the waters we row on every day.

What impact has British Rowing’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy had so far?

The rowing community continues to engage more and more on the multiple aspects  of ‘Helping our Waters Thrive’.

Seven rowing clubs are now actively conducting water testing with the help of River Action, highlighting the importance of data collection and education in their local communities. This number is set to increase thanks to support from British Rowing’s recently-launched Thriving Waters Scheme, designed to support clubs in water testing, litter removal and controlling invasive species in their waterways. Applications for this have just closed and clubs and groups will be hearing soon whether they’ve been successful.

Closer to home, the GB Rowing Team’s National Training Centre in Caversham has committed to a year of testing, uploading results to the Earthwatch database. GB athletes have been trained in how to conduct these tests and share results.

British Rowing continues to gather partners in this space – partnering with EU Eco-certified and marine friendly cleaning products supplier Delphis Eco to help educate the rowing community on the importance of not polluting water with chemicals. British Rowing is also working closely with the Animal and Health Agency to tackle the prevalence of invasive species in blue spaces and encourage prevention with proper ‘Check, Clean, Dry’ practices.

Poor water quality affects more than just the environment – it affects the health of rowers across the country. British Rowing collects data of incidents of rowers becoming ill due to dirty water to help build the evidence base in order to impress on the water companies and government for more action, faster. We have an ongoing dialogue with several water companies on this matter.