A shared moment examining cowpats in the Cornish countryside - with the chief executive of South West Water - was the entry point into the company for Carolyn Cadman, who is director of natural resources for the UK water utility.

Here she shares her career highlights and what keeps her in the role.

How did your childhood influence your career choices?

I grew up in rural Suffolk in the ‘eighties, so for me and my sister, entertaining ourselves was spending time in the outdoors, and learning about nature from our grandparents.

What did you study and where?

I studied geography at Lancaster University, then won a scholarship to do a master’s degree in landscape and culture at Nottingham University. The key theme of both degrees was decision-making – how do you choose between spending money and time on one priority over another.

That got me interested in sustainable development; it was around the time that ethical business models were emerging and the Body Shop was really big. I also got really interested in the sea environment, so I decided I’d like to pursue these aspects of geography in my career.

What was your first job after graduating?

I started out supporting communities running community projects in rural Essex, and continued working on rural development projects for Malvern Hills District Council, then the Countryside Agency in Birmingham.

I spent two-and-a-half years at Natural England, then joined the Marine Management Organisation, which regulates England’s seas. As a family, we decided to move to Cornwall in 2015 and I joined Cornwall Council to lead an organisational change programme – where again I could put my interest in decision-making to good use.

How did you enter the water sector?

When the chief executive role came up at Cornwall Wildlife Trust (CWT), I couldn’t resist, and very happily landed that role. For four-and-a-half years, I was proud to lead the charity, which also had a consultancy arm which donated all profits to the charity.

One of the projects that CWT delivered was South West Water’s award-winning Upstream Thinking programme, which uses natural solutions to reduce the impacts of agriculture on water quality and wildlife in river catchments. Part of my role was to take senior people on site visits to see work on the ground.

In the summer of 2021, we took Susan Davy, chief executive of South West Water (SWW), on a visit, and had her down on hands and knees looking at the difference between organic and non-organic cowpats. I took the opportunity to explain that surprisingly, there are more dung beetles in an organic cowpat than a non-organic one.

I got talking to Susan about life and work and career aspirations, and that effectively turned into a job interview. I was then asked to come and help with the challenges SWW was facing, in particular in increasing awareness of the positive environmental improvements we deliver through our own programmes and in partnership with others across the south-west.

What is the most important thing you have learnt in your career?

At the Wildlife Trust, I learnt about the importance of relationships and building trust between organisations and individuals. More than half of the charity’s work is with others, including farmers, fishing communities and community groups.

In Upstream Thinking, SWW is supporting organisations like Cornwall Wildlife Trust to employ local advisers to support with farmers and landowners who manage land near reservoirs and places where we abstract water. If we can support those farmers to farm differently - use less pesticides, cover their yards, separate dirty water from clean water - we can reduce the amount of nasties going into the reservoir or rivers that we would have to pay to remove further down the line, at the treatment works.

It is a win for water quality, a win for the farmers and a win for the delivery partners, because all of that activity is also good for wildlife.

What keeps you passionate about your work in water?

A thriving natural environment has sufficient water to sustain humans, wildlife and biodiversity, and my sense is that people don’t always think about the impact of water on nature and vice versa. People can be disconnected from nature, and when that happens, there is a tendency to be disconnected from the value and importance of water.

Even within the water company, part of what I do is to remind colleagues, who largely have backgrounds in engineering and accountancy, about the importance of looking after the natural world, because the natural world needs water just as much as humans do.

What would you like to change?

I have been quite influenced by a programme called Building for Nature, a set of housing standards developed by Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. The scheme has three main themes – water, wellbeing and wildlife – and you can achieve different standards of accreditation.

I think there is a lot that water companies can learn from the scheme by thinking about our own water management challenges through the lens of wellbeing and wildlife. For example, how can we make space for wildlife – bat-boxes, bird-boxes, trees, green spaces. I think we need more of this kind of thinking to improve the connection between water, wildlife and wellbeing for communities.

I’ve taken those factors into my work at South West Water. In terms of water management, we need more sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS), including wetlands and rain gardens, which will benefit the wildlife of the region, and given what we know about the climate crisis and the ecological crisis – help build resilience too.

What do you love most in the natural world?

In terms of the Cornish environment, Cornwall Wildlife Trust colleagues introduced me to scrambled egg lichen – which is quite rare. It gets its name because it absolutely looks like scrambled eggs, and it’s found on sand dunes in Penhale.

My favourite species in Cornwall is anything with a fin that I can see in the sea, or indeed grey seals. I can quite often see dolphins and I was sad last week to miss the sight of three humpback whales doing an acrobatic display very close to where I live. Lots of people saw it and I was gutted to have missed it, but one day, one day!

To find out more about careers with South West Water, visit https://careers.southwestwater...