NICOLE has had some notable successes, issuing benchmark guidance on key issues affecting industrial land management. For instance the review of the type of evidence required to demonstrate monitored natural attenuation provides guidance as good as can be found anywhere. The booklet on stakeholder engagement, with its striking image of a person in a hazard protection suit on a crowded beach certainly showed how important it is to communicate with people who have a vested interest in land management. 

Other people will no doubt talk about how NICOLE started, but it is important to remember how much the context of industrial land management has changed. Notice I did mention clean-up or remediation? This is entirely intentional. I can certainly say that in the UK there is more emphasis on proportionate, manageable and sustainable land management. My particular experiences relate to my organisation, the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), a government owned organisation working in partnership with academics and industry to deploy technological solutions that support continued operations on nuclear sites across the UK.  Such sites are busy industrial locations.  How do you avoid disrupting operations at such sites, yet need to manage land for decades? By looking at long term land management technologies that have a small footprint, use materials that are readily obtainable (maybe by-products), and are durable, safe and cost effective. Let’s use that word sustainable again. 

Looking back at “tree of life” images that so many people painted in the entertaining session at its 10^th anniversary conference, I wish NICOLE all the best to grow and be sustainable for the next 10 years.    
 
Currently Divyesh Trivedi is research fellow at The National Nuclear Laboratory in UK.

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