A property rights schema for cultural flows in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Water management in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin is undergoing a highly-contested shift from single use management for irrigation, to multiple use management for irrigation and environmental flows. Despite a requirement to ‘take account’ of Indigenous values, multiple use management does not yet include cultural flows – water flows for Aboriginal groups to maintain Indigenous cultural values. Within the economics literature, cultural values are treated as a passive ‘use’ of place for spiritual or cultural activities, with cultural flows framed as flows of water delivered to particular sites for cultural ‘uses’. Aboriginal groups, however, argue for cultural flows to be defined in terms of water entitlements – a property right to water. Property rights have evolved within a specific historic and cultural context, and reflect a Western ontology that is very different to Aboriginal ontologies. This article explores whether a property rights construct might be compatible with Aboriginal ontologies, and whether water entitlements could deliver cultural benefits in ways hoped for by Aboriginal peoples. We find that cultural flows need to extend beyond rights to flows of water to encompass a broader bundle of rights including management and governance rights, if Aboriginal groups are to obtain beneficial cultural outcomes from those flows.