HSBC is investing $100m to help transform the lives of more than 1 million people through providing access to safe water and spearheading water protection projects. The bank will be working with leading charities on social and environmental projects which have the potential to provide long-term economic benefits to local communities.

see this website for more information: http://www.hsbc.com/1/2/newsroom/news/2012/water-programme

Come along to Green Week and hear RESTORE partners talk about Advancing European Integrated River Basin Management

Is modern living resulting in more people becoming disconnected from green spaces and the natural world, at the expense of our health and well-being?
Most concern is centred around children, who - say campaigners - are missing out on opportunities afforded to previous generations, ones as simple as climbing trees or getting their knees dirty. UK children are losing contact with nature at a "dramatic" rate, and their health and education are suffering, a National Trust report says.  A 2009 report by Natural England found that only 10% of children played in woodland, compared with 40% of their parents' generation. In an increasingly urbanised, electronic-based, risk-adverse world, the adults of the future are displaying the symptoms of "nature-deficit disorder".
 

Additional articles:

Does outdoor play keep the doctor away?

 Natural Childhood - The National Trust

In a Radio 4 programme aired in April as part of the Nature series, Brett Westwood explored the growing use of coarse woody debris (CWD) in managing rivers.  

 ''According to Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, fish live in trees too'', says the BBC Radio 4. ''The Trust's biologists are using wood as a remarkably effective tool to change the depth and flow of streams and improve them for wildlife. They don't just stop at streams either: at the confluence of the Tame and Trent rivers, they've submerged entire willow trees in gravel islands in a project to widen the river channel.