Assessing stakeholder structure in water governance in the Murray-Darling Basin, a public submission perspective

Abstract

Transformation from top-down government to collaborative governance for natural resources requires broadening the scope of stakeholders involved. However, the systemic identification and assessment of stakeholder engagement remains a challenge. This paper develops a network-based framework for assessing stakeholder engagement in natural resources governance. The framework proposed five system-level metrics: inclusivity, cohesion, centralization, efficiency, and brokerage, as well as three node-level metrics: dominators, brokers, and communicators. By using public submission data on four government policy initiatives each reflecting a major component of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, this study assessed the structural aspects of stakeholder engagement relevant to water resource management in the Murray-Darling Basin following legislative reforms in 2007. Findings suggested that current stakeholder engagement structures are neither balanced, nor have adequate maturity to develop a governance approach to resolve issues within the Basin. High variability between patterns of involvement in submissions to key policy initiatives indicated there were haphazard aggregations of public comments and the top-down approach to water management is still dominant. The framework developed in this paper offers a structural and systemic perspective for re-configuring stakeholder engagement networks for improving collaborative governance.