The LWEC Partnership: 22 public sector organisations that fund, carry out and use environmental research and observations. They include the UK research councils, government departments with environmental responsibilities, devolved administrations and government agencies. The private sector is represented by a Business Advisory Board.

LWEC Funding: LWEC does not have a separate funding budget. Member organisations who have their own budgets pay an annual subscription and/or contribute staff resources to run a small directorate and/ or contribute to common needs such as a database (Envirobase) of all the research they fund.

LWEC Governance: The Partnership's governance structure consists of a Partners Forum which meets twice a year and an Executive Management Committee which meets more regularly (see separate pages below). A Business Advisory Board Board provides input on behalf of the business community.  

The UK Environmental Observation Framework (UK-EOF) is a core activitiy of LWEC and reports to the LWEC Executive Management Committee, but has its own management structure and website.

Living With Environmental Change also works closely with other groups such as the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences.

Benefit to Taxpayers: LWEC generates enormous benefit  for the UK tax payer. Here are a couple of examples of how:

1. Partners who fund activities relevant to LWEC challenges can come together under the LWEC umbrella to explore how to achieve the best return on their investments for the UK tax payer. It is often more cost-effective, for example, for two organisations who need different scientific evidence from a project to design the project together to get the results they both need rather than to fund two separate projects. LWEC has the convening power to bring partners together to forge these collaborations which often result in rapid innovation and quicker delivery of results. LWEC has also developed new ways to manage the contractual arrangements and changes in working practices that novel approaches can entail.

2. When looking to future knowledge and capacity needs in the UK, LWEC facilitates a multi-perspective approach to research investment strategy. For cross-cutting issues such as Flooding and Coastal Erosion, for example,  LWEC can enable individual organisations to align their strategies to achieve a more holistic approach and avoid the risk of over-representation by one discipline or interest group.

Any remaining questions, please contact: office@lwec.org.uk