Abstract
The authors describe and analyze management in the Murray-Darling basin of Australia, long regarded as a model for integrated river basin management. This interior basin of over 1 million km2 in semi-arid southeastern Australia is defined by the catchment areas of the Murray and Darling Rivers and their tributaries. Water management issues include allocation, quality, and dryland salinity. Because of Australia's federal governmental structure, institutional development has been more a matter of integrating state and local endeavors than decentralization of national authority. The Australian national government has little constitutional power over water resources. The five states in the basin make policy regarding water rights, discharge permits, fees, and the construction and operation of physical structures. River management began on the Murray River in the 1920s under the terms of a tri-state agreement. As the scope of management widened to the entire basin, more states were added and the national government supported the creation of new arrangements for integrated water resource management, with some provision for stakeholder participation. The dynamics of state-national authority over water policy, and the emergence in recent years of numerous local-level catchment organization, contribute to some uncertainty about the future course of basin management in this internationally renowned site.
Highlights
Background and IntroductionIntegrated water resource management (IWRM) and organizing it primarily at the river basin level are two of the most common and widely repeated recommendations in the water resources literature of the last decade if not longer (Allee 1988; Galloway 1997; McDonald and Kay 1988; World Bank 1993)
Basin management is often associated with the concept of decentralization, of managing water resources at the “lowest appropriate level.” (See, e.g., International Conference on Water and the Environment 1992; Mody 2001.) Several conceptual arguments have been presented in favor of decentralization in water resource management, and basin-level management in particular: that the whole array of resources and use patterns in the basin will be taken into account, public participation will be greater and broader, management decisions will be based on better knowledge of local conditions, and so on
With the support of the World Bank, the project team has searched for those factors and their relationships to river basin management in two ways: with a survey of river basin organizations throughout the world, and with case studies of eight river basins analyzed in greater detail
Summary
Integrated water resource management (IWRM) and organizing it primarily at the river basin level are two of the most common and widely repeated recommendations in the water resources literature of the last decade if not longer (Allee 1988; Galloway 1997; McDonald and Kay 1988; World Bank 1993). With the support of the World Bank, the project team has searched for those factors and their relationships to river basin management in two ways: with a survey of river basin organizations throughout the world, and with case studies of eight river basins analyzed in greater detail. Some of those eight cases have emerged recently, as in the Warta River basin of Poland and the Fraser River basin of Canada. Brief descriptions of the basin’s physical characteristics, social and economic profile, and historical development are included in this paper
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