Beyond Recognition: Lessons from Chile for Allocating Indigenous Water Rights in Australia

Abstract

Australian water law frameworks, which authorise water use, have historically excluded indigenous people. Indigenous land now exceeds 30 per cent of the total land in Australia. Yet indigenous water use rights are estimated at less than 0.01 per cent of total Australian water allocations. In the limited situations where water law frameworks have engaged with indigenous interests, they typically conceive of such interests as falling outside of the ‘consumptive pool’ of water applicable to commercial uses associated with activities on land such as irrigation, agriculture, industry or tourism.