Terms of reference
These terms of reference set out why the Think Tank exists, who takes part, how decisions are made and what leaves the room. They are a working draft. Comments go to the facilitators, and the revised version is the one everyone signs.
Why Water 2100 exists
Water 2100 brings together people from across the water–land system to explore its systemic challenges collaboratively, generating evidence and insight to inform long-term strategic thinking for water and land in England. The challenges are systemic: no one sector or organisation can shift them alone, so the work starts with connection between people, sectors and disciplines that do not usually work together.
The Think Tank thinks in the long term and acts in the present. Its horizon is 2100; its work is to turn that ambition into shared direction, evidence and action today. Water 2100 is not a strategy, a policy or a tactical solution. It is the start of a conversation, and its outputs are not fixed in advance — they emerge from the work.
What the Think Tank sets out to do
To understand the system — its key challenges, drivers, interdependencies and the perspectives within it. To generate collective insight and new evidence for long-term water–land strategy through a collaborative, multi-disciplinary and participatory process. To build trust, in a space for cross-sector engagement that welcomes free thinking, creativity and open contribution. To build support for a way forward, by deepening understanding of different contexts and motivations and looking beyond individual interests and agendas. To prioritise, frame and explore one systemic challenge at a time, and develop interventions and pathways that are viable, desirable and feasible in a whole-system context. And to grow influence, so that the Think Tank's community and insights inform strategic thinking for the long-term future of water and land.
How the Think Tank works
The Think Tank works within five principles. They apply to everyone taking part and to everything it produces.
- [1]Systemic Approach. Explore systematically, tackle a systemic challenge. The Think Tank looks at the whole water–land system before it chooses where to act, and keeps the whole in view even when it is working on one challenge. Symptoms are traced to root causes, and a connected system is not broken up into separate problems.
- [2]Long Term Thinking. Avoid near-term, "solve it tomorrow" solutions. The horizon is 2100. The long view is used to open up what is necessary, not only what feels possible now, and to test whether action taken today still creates value then.
- [3]Open Collaboration. Work collaboratively across boundaries. Sectors, disciplines and organisations that do not usually work together do so here, and the work is shared openly across the programme and, wherever possible, beyond it.
- [5]Insights & Innovation. Aim to create genuinely novel, radical outputs. The Think Tank exists to produce thinking the sector does not already have, and is prepared to be radical in what it proposes.
Who is involved
The Chair convenes the Think Tank, provides scientific assurance, and holds the group to its question and its long-term purpose. The Chair challenges and guides, and does not vote.
Core members are the deliberative body. They hold the Think Tank's direction, decide what it works on, and carry the work between sessions, taking part as individuals with expertise rather than as delegates of their organisations.
The advisory network brings subject-specific evidence, expertise, analysis, scrutiny and peer review when core members ask for it. It is advisory: it does not count towards quorum and does not vote. It stays open to new members as the programme develops.
The facilitators, Studio Andthen, design and steward the process, facilitate sessions, capture what the group produces and play it back, coordinate between core members, the advisory network and commissioned experts, and author the final report.
The Environment Agency programme team convenes and funds the programme. It provides evidence and logistics support, manages communications and the participatory contract, coordinates with the Water 2100 Steering Group, and provides trained facilitators to support sessions. It commissions academics and experts, and brings in the Environment Agency's science and evidence colleagues, to produce analysis for the Think Tank to work with, test and challenge. The Environment Agency also holds one seat among the core members.
The wider ecosystem is everyone beyond the programme and the Environment Agency with a stake in the water–land system: other initiatives working on the same problems, organisations, communities and individuals who would be affected by the pathways the Think Tank proposes or who have something to feed in. They are not asked to sign this document.
How the groups work together
Core members can call on the advisory network at any point — to bring evidence or expertise into a session, to peer review a synthesis, challenge definition or pathway before it travels further, to test thinking with a sector, or to take on a piece of work between think tanks. Requests go through the facilitators, who match the ask to the people in the network and keep a record of what was asked and what came back. Advisory network members can also put themselves forward when they see a gap, and can be invited into online working sessions on a specific issue.
Anyone in the programme can reach into the wider ecosystem. Core members and the advisory network are often the best route, because they know who is working on what and can bring people in to share evidence, react to emerging thinking or test a pathway where it would land. The facilitators and the programme team help make the connection and keep track of who has been involved. Commissioned analysis is briefed from the Think Tank's own findings and presented as findings and open questions to probe, not conclusions to accept. Everyone in the programme works from the same synthesis and the same decision log, shared in the order set out in section 10.
What core members decide
Core members decide what the Think Tank works on: the focus areas, the priorities and the systemic challenges it takes forward. The Think Tank focuses on one systemic challenge at a time, knowing it will intertwine with others — it does one thing well. Core members decide when work on a challenge moves forward, pauses, is reframed or closes, and what leaves the Think Tank in its name: which findings, pathways and recommendations are taken forward, and how they are described.
How decisions are made
Decisions are made collectively by core members. A quorum of two-thirds of core members, taking part in the room or in writing, is needed for a decision to count. The group works towards a position most core members can live with, through evidence, dialogue and structured judgement.
Where core members do not agree, a vote can take place. A simple majority of those taking part carries it, and the result is recorded with the numbers.
Disagreement is made visible, not smoothed over. Anyone taking part, including the Chair, can have a disagreement entered in the decision log, by name or anonymously.
A decision made in a session stays open for one week, while the synthesis is with core members, so that anyone who missed it can contribute in writing and count towards the quorum. A decision can be reopened when there is new evidence or the challenge has been reframed.
What is asked of those taking part
Core members attend the in-person think tanks, where the work happens and each builds on the last. Where they can, they also attend online working sessions, and they read what is sent in advance. They give feedback in good time, against deadlines shared in advance, and carry work between sessions, drawing on their own expertise, networks and organisational insight. Advisory network members respond to requests when they can, and say so early when they cannot.
Everyone speaks for themselves, not on behalf of their organisation, and says so when a view is their employer's rather than their own. Working-level participants who can contribute consistently are as welcome as senior ones. Anyone declares it when a decision touches their own or their organisation's interests, and the declaration is recorded.
A place in the core group or the advisory network is personal; substitutes are not sent. If a core member withdraws, core members and the Environment Agency programme team agree together whether and how to fill the place.
Independence of the Think Tank
The Think Tank's conclusions are its own. Three things protect that.
The facilitators are hands-off on content. They hold the process — design, facilitation, capture and playback — and take no position within it: they do not vote, do not decide, and do not advocate for any outcome, including the Environment Agency's. Environment Agency staff supporting facilitation work under the same rule.
The Environment Agency convenes and funds the programme but does not direct its conclusions. Its seat among the core members is one voice in the room. Its programme team and the Steering Group receive the Think Tank's findings and respond to them; they do not settle them.
The Chair is free to challenge anyone in the process — core members, facilitators, the Environment Agency — to hold the group to its question and its long-term purpose, and to say so when the work drifts towards short-term or institutional interests.
The independence of the process and the impartiality of its facilitation are assessed with the Think Tank as part of the programme's evaluation.
How contributions are recorded
Within a week of every session, everyone who took part receives the synthesis, with an open invitation to challenge whether their views, including dissent, have been fairly represented. Findings are not shared outside the Think Tank until that week has passed and any challenges have been answered. A decision log records what was decided, the options considered, the reasoning, the evidence and who was involved. Documents go to core members first, then to the advisory network, then to the Steering Group and beyond, so each is checked by the people whose views it reflects before it travels further.
What is said in the room, and what leaves it
The Think Tank works under the Chatham House Rule: what is learned can be used, but nothing is attributed to a named person or organisation without their consent. Published outputs name the Think Tank, its core members and its advisory network collectively; individual quotes are used only with the permission of the person quoted.
Outputs are public by default. The system map, the challenge the Think Tank defines, the pathways and the evidence behind them are shared as openly as possible, during the programme and after it, so others can learn from them and build on them.
What people give, and what they get
Taking part is voluntary and unpaid, and everyone meets their own costs. Anyone can withdraw from the process at any time. In return, everyone taking part gets a direct hand in setting the long-term direction of England's water–land system, a network across sectors that rarely work together, and named credit in what the Think Tank produces.
If something is wrong
Any concern can be raised directly with any Andthen director, or anonymously through session feedback. A concern about the facilitators' conduct goes to the Environment Agency programme team, a route that does not pass through Andthen. Access and adjustment needs can be raised at any time, without explanation; making participation possible is the facilitators' job, not the participant's.
Personal data
Contact details, session contributions and any adjustment needs are held by Studio Andthen on encrypted, access-controlled storage under UK GDPR. They are shared only as needed to run the programme, and deleted or handed to the Environment Agency, as agreed with the people concerned, when the contract ends.
Changing this
Anyone who has signed can propose a change to any section at any time; changes are agreed by core members under section 7. The document is signed once a year. Signing again renews each person's place in the programme and gives everyone a set moment to review the whole document.
Comments and questions on these terms go to the facilitators, Studio Andthen, at lewis@studioandthen.com.