Restoring Rivers: Hogan Lovells supports The Rivers Trust in multi-year shared value partnership

In 2024, Hogan Lovells colleagues from the UK offices selected The Rivers Trust as their new UK Responsible Business charity partner for three years, supporting the firm's Responsible Business strategic focus area of advancing innovation in environmental protection. Since then, teams across Hogan Lovells have worked together to fundraise, volunteer and provide pro bono legal and business advice that supports The Rivers Trust Movement and its vision of wild, healthy, natural rivers, valued by all. This partnership builds on our ambitions to advance progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a particular focus on SDG 14 - Life Below Water; 15 - Life on Land; 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation; and 13 - Climate Action.

According to the Trust’s ‘State of Our Rivers Report’, ‘no single stretch of river in England or Northern Ireland is in good overall health’. And ‘just 15% of English and 31% of Northern Irish rivers meet good ecological health standards.’

Elaine Penrose, partner at Hogan Lovells and charity partnerships co-chair said:

“Our rivers and waterways are a vital part of our ecosystem and given current levels of pollution from sewage, chemicals and rubbish, action must be taken now to protect the environment we live in. We partner with leading impact organisations to utilise our expertise to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals with the ambition of creating communities that are fit for future generations.”

Through our partnership so far:

• Over £263,000 has been donated to The Rivers Trust, Thames21 and Trent Rivers Trust, made up of colleague fundraising, annual nature-based solutions grants and firm matched donations.
• Over 530 colleagues from across the firm have supported the partnership by taking part in over 4,800 hours of Responsible Business activity.
• We’ve provided over £1,127,000 of in-kind pro bono support for The Rivers Trust movement, supporting 26 projects.
• We advised The Rivers Trust on entering an IP licensing arrangement with The Adventures of Scout. This enables The Rivers Trust to use illustrations of the Scout character as a virtual ‘river ambassador’ for its awareness campaigns and to create educational resources featuring Scout, which will be shared with member trusts, schools and educators. We also advised on the Acceptable Use Policy for member trusts wishing to use The Rivers Trust’s commissioned illustrations and educational materials.
• The Rivers Trust have shared their insights and expertise with our clients and colleagues at our latest client event - 'Making waves: Transforming business with action on water' as part of our ESG Game Changers client series.
• We have raised over £123,000 to support The Rivers Trust, Thames21 and Trent Rivers Trust, through a range of events that have engaged colleagues from across our UK offices, including spinathons, an abseil and Legally Ballroom.
• Over 100 colleagues have volunteered on River Restoration Days with Thames21 and Trent Rivers Trust.
• Over 70 colleagues took part in The Big River Watch, a citizen science campaign led by The Rivers Trust, helping to document river health across the UK and Ireland.
• We have delivered nine “Water Wednesday” sessions, an educational series provided jointly with The Rivers Trust to enable Hogan Lovells colleagues to engage in the partnership and learn more about associated sustainability topics and ESG issues affecting our waterways.

Specific projects that benefit from the partnership and pro bono legal representation include:

• The Aire Resilience Company, which works to unlock public and private finance to deliver improved flood defences in the River Aire and bring a range of benefits to the surrounding region.
• London Riverbank and Thames21, who have created a social enterprise model for selling watercourse biodiversity units to fund investment in natural capital, with all profits re-invested in local environmental initiatives.
• Resilient Glenderamackin Landscape Recovery, which has developed an innovative financial model linking buyers and sellers of ecosystems services to support farmers in maintaining nature-based solutions on their land for 20+ years.

A series of workshops and webinars are also being developed by our lawyers and business teams to enhance the knowledge and skillset of colleagues at The Rivers Trust and its 65 member trusts.

The lessons from these strategic projects will be shared across The Rivers Trust Movement to help deliver improvements to rivers and their catchment areas throughout the UK.

Mark Lloyd, CEO of The Rivers Trust said:

“Our rivers are in a desperate state, and they are on the frontline of both the climate crisis and catastrophic biodiversity loss. There is an urgent need to restore natural features such as wetlands, riverside trees and healthy soils to rebuild our resilience to climate change and aid nature’s recovery. The partnership with Hogan Lovells has already been a great support to our growing movement of local Trusts, helping us to raise awareness of the critical state our rivers are in and deliver sustainable solutions at a landscape scale across the UK and the island of Ireland.”