Sentiment levers in public submissions for water governance in the Murray-Darling Basin

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.

In Australia’s Murray – Darling Basin (MDB), the law explicitly requires strategies for managing risks to water quality and quantity. In this paper, we analyse water governance in the Basin, identifying inadequate governance standards and practices. Current arrangements in the MDB demonstrate deficiencies and vulnerabilities that limit capabilities for dealing with known or emerging risks and erode the legitimacy of governing institutions. Our analysis of the problems and opportunities for reform is informed by the OECD’s principles of good water governance and the legal concept of the rule of law. We conclude that ignoring opportunities to adopt better-practice water governance is a severe risk to the MDB’s shared waters. To overcome reactionary crisis-reaction reform, we propose reforms that empower critical evaluations of governance structures, rules, practices and participation. Therefore, proposed reforms of policy, institutions and legislation do not simply attempt one-off changes to enhance transparency and accountability but instead seek to enshrine processes of continuous, ongoing improvements to water governance.

Earlier research has examined the research on the limits of market-based water governance and the current progress and future direction of legal and judicial oversight of the Murray Darling Basin. This paper seeks to briefly re-iterate the theoretical foundations for justifying the higher degree of governmental intervention in the Murray Darling Basin, in seeking to comprehend why water market failure occurred for the period 1994-2010 Stronger Federal government intervention in the management of the Murray Darling Basin commenced in 2007, marked by the passing of the Water Act 2007. Theoretical study on government failure is explored to further comprehend why for the period of water reform 1994-2010 no mixed market – governmental institutional framework led to the appropriate balance of environmental protection and transition economy investment strategy for the Murray Darling Basin. Policy development in the area of transition economy investment strategies, which include re-training/re-skilling to allow for a diversified low-water intensive irrigator income stream, has been piecemeal. The sequence of selected theoretical work considered is divided into two sections (i) market failure; and (ii) governmental failure. The theoretical work considered in the context are the Coase theorem, the two fundamental theorems of welfare economics, public goods and social choice theory/theory of groups, theories of justice, mechanism design theory, negotiation/bargaining theory, actor network theory and new collaborative governance. Most of the theoretical work examined is either contained within or closely related to new institutional economics.

Many water scientists aim for their work to inform water policy and management, and in pursuit of this objective, they often work alongside government water agencies to ensure their research is relevant, timely and communicated effectively. A paper in this issue, examining 'Science integrity, public policy and water governance in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’, suggests that a large group of scientists, who work on water management in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) including the Basin Plan, have been subject to possible ‘administrative capture'. Specifically, it is suggested that they have advocated for policies favoured by government agencies with the objective of gaining personal benefit, such as increased research funding. We examine evidence for this claim and conclude that it is not justified. The efforts of scientists working alongside government water agencies appear to have been misinterpreted as possible administrative capture. Although unsubstantiated, this claim does indicate that the science used in basin water planning is increasingly caught up in the politics of water management. We suggest actions to improve science-policy engagement in basin planning, to promote constructive debate over contested views and avoid the over-politicisation of basin science.

Integration, a widely promoted response to the multi-scale complexities of social-environmental sustainability, is diversely and sometimes poorly conceptualized. In this paper we explore integrative governance, which we define as an iterative and contextual process for negotiating and advancing the common interest. We ground this definition in a discussion of institutional factors conditioning integrative governance of environmental water in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin. The Murray-Darling Basin is an iconic system of social-ecological complexity, evocative of large-scale conservation challenges in other developed arid river basins. Our critical assessment of integrative governance practices in that context emerges through analysis of interviews with policy participants and documents pertaining to environmental water management in the tri-state area of southwestern New South Wales, northwestern Victoria, and the South Australian Riverland. We identify four linked challenges: (i) decision support for developing socially robust environmental water management goals, (ii) resource constraints on adaptive practice, (iii) inter-state differences in participatory decision-making and devolution of authority, and (iv) representative inclusion in decision-making. Our appraisal demonstrates these as pivotal challenges for integrative governance in the common interest. We conclude by offering a perspective on the potential for supporting integrative governance through the bridging capacity of Australia's Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder.

The Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) is a very complex socio-ecological system, with a multitude of stakeholders, industries, climates, infrastructure developments, and ecosystems. Human occupation spans back millennia, but within the last two centuries there have been massive changes brought about by a succession of government, community and business actions that have reshaped the environment. It is in such an environment that policy and decision-makers find themselves, in their view, having to plan interventions in a complex and uncertain situation, being unable to foresee the emergent characteristics of their actions. One proposed way forward in improving aspects of the MDB situation is to create the conditions for social learning among stakeholders in order to achieve changes in understanding that lead to changes in practices. Social learning can be thought of as a process of building mutual understanding and concerted action among stakeholders towards an improved situation. Effective facilitation, or mediation, is an important component of this, and we propose that a stakeholder-constructed game-based modeling platform can act as a mediating object for exploring the outcomes and emergent consequences of water use and management decisions. We have embarked on an action research project to construct a game-based modeling platform, developed in collaboration with the University of Virginia's UVa Bay Game team, to explore some of the social-technical dynamics of water allocation in the MDB. The Goulburn-Broken Catchment (GBC), in northern Victoria, has been chosen to scope the concept. There are three main research objectives: (1) to construct a robust gamebased modeling platform in the context of the MDB; (2) to engage with a diverse range of stakeholders to decide on key components of the MDB situation to represent in the modeling platform; and (3) to foster reflexivity about the process of model development, game-play and their potential to support practice change among the research team, collaborators and MDB stakeholders. Firstly, in the UVa game, the overall objectives were condensed to measurable environmental and economic outcomes where land-based players (farmers, land developers, and their associated regulators) took decisions that influenced the amount of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous) entering the aquatic system and waterbased players (fishers and regulators). In the MDB, an essential issue of concern to government, consumptive water users and the environment is how to allocate water between different uses. At the macro level, these are consumptive use by people in its various forms and the 'natural' environment. To-date, the MDB Game consists of a conceptual stocks-and-flows model to keep track of the physical aspects of water, the financial outcomes or stocks of money, and ecosystem outcomes or stocks of natural capital. The flows in the model represent transformations of, for example, irrigation water into a crop and subsequent income or a financial transaction related to water trading activity between consumptive users. The players interface with the model by making management decisions related to their role. Currently there are 5 government authority players, 6 types of consumptive use players and 2 guardian players. Historical or simulated weather and hydrology will be used to drive the underlying processes. Secondly, we have begun engaging with environmental water managers from the regional level, policymakers and practitioners from the state level, and are planning a workshop hosted by the federal agency tasked with developing a MDB-wide water management plan. This has already led to a shared understanding of the complex dynamics associated with environmental water allocations across these levels of water governance. Finally, the process of contextualizing a game-based modeling platform designed for a different socio-ecological system has inspired reflexive thought about how the MDB situation is framed.

Water governance and stakeholder engagement are receiving research attention for their role in formulating and implementing solutions to the world’s critical water challenges. The inspiration for this Special Issue came from our desire to provide a platform for sharing results and informing the global water governance community about the wealth of excellent interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and projects being carried out around the world. The 20 peer-reviewed papers collected in this Special Issue have been grouped into three categories: stakeholder engagement, tools for building water management and governance capacity, and perspectives on water management and governance. Following a brief summary of the papers, concluding remarks that reflect on what the papers, taken as a whole, contribute to our understanding are provided.

Due to increased climate uncertainty, political instability and economic turbulence, many interstate river basins are in the midst of transforming their water governance strategies to embrace the aforementioned challenges. A prerequisite of achieving such transformation is to understand various types of rules that build the water governance structure of the river basins. Therefore, we demonstrate an institutional analysis approach that combines the institutional grammar and the institutional analysis and development framework’s rule typology to identify the various type of formal rules regulating the water resources in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (MDB). The institutional feature and key actors of the basin’s water governance structure under different water governance situations are also explored. The approach is built on an institutional content analysis tool named institutional grammar and the institutional analysis and development framework’s rule typology. Using the approach, we dissect the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement of Australian Government’s Water Act 2007 to generate data for institutional analysis and subsequently, identifying the number and types of rules that form MDB’s water governance structure. We identify that MDB’s water governance structure stresses on choice rules and information rules that regulate actors’ choice of actions and the flow of information. Nevertheless, there are rules that only present in certain water governance situations, which indicating its institutional features. For instance, the position rules that create the basin’s water resource administrative units are found only in the action situation of administration. The scope rules that delineate the physical outcome to be produced are found dominating the action situations of water resource appropriation. The co-thinking type of aggregation rules that control the requirement of stakeholder consultation are mostly found in the situation of basin planning. In conclusion, the proposed approach able to generate the quantitative and qualitative information that can be used to analyze the complex structure of water resource governance in a river basin. Therefore, the research contributes to the development of a systematic water institution analysis tool.

This paper uses the transboundary governance capacity framework (TGC) to compare responses to nonpoint pollution in the Great Lakes and transboundary water basins in North America and Australia. A step-wise approach to comparison refines our understanding of transboundary water governance institutions, their design and performance. Using case studies that move from similar to different geographic contexts, this comparative approach explores the opportunities and limits for mutual learning; it draws on a set of institutional indicators developed for the TGC framework to assess governance capacity within and across different geographic contexts. Governance capacity for nonpoint pollution has been uneven in the Great Lakes with pockets of success linked to high levels of multiple indicators. Capacity depends on legitimacy crafted through multi-layered participatory decision-making processes, buttressed by formal conflict resolution and the availability of regulatory mechanisms for third party enforcement if incentives and participation prove insufficient. In the Columbia, Colorado and Murray-Darling Basins ‘issue linkages’ have been used to remedy deficits in governance capacity by drawing from other water-related challenges, such as fisheries and water scarcity, where governance capacity exists. In all cases, transboundary governance capacity has required attention to ‘process values’ – that is the procedures used to come to decisions and implement nonpoint pollution programs. Future research should examine how attributes of transboundary governance capacity evolve in relation to environmental quality indicators; it should also identify finer grained measures of the indicators to ensure external validity and enable comparisons within and across case studies. Keywords: adaptive governance, transboundary water governance, governance capacity, Great Lakes, Murray-Darling Basin, Columbia River, Colorado River, comparative water research, non point pollution

Globally, water governance struggles to reconcile increased demands on water resources with climate change–induced reductions in supply, making climate adaptation in water governance a pressing concern. The Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework has emerged as a climate adaptation tool designed to help make adaptation decisions. However, there is limited understanding of social and political factors, which are critical in driving RAD decisions. This paper explores how communities are employing RAD to make climate adaptation decisions, using a case study of the Goulburn-Murray Resilience Strategy (the Strategy); a community-led strategy that uses a version of the RAD framework to build regional resilience in the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District (GMID) in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (MDB). The Strategy focuses on building socio-economic, rather than ecological, resilience, making this research a valuable contribution to RAD literature. To apply the RAD framework to socio-economic adaptation, we adapted the framework to include IPCC language around incremental, transformational, planned, and autonomous adaptation. With the GMID considered a leader of resilience thinking in Australia, the Strategy may help decision-makers address water overallocation and contested governance in the MDB, and provide lessons for water governance globally. Data analysed from 20 semi-structured interviews with people involved with the Strategy revealed two main findings: (1) Communities and governments prioritise different actions under the RAD framework. Governments, particularly at the state level, preference incremental planned adaptation to maintain the status quo (resist), over incremental autonomous adaptation to changing conditions (accept), and transformational planned adaptation at various scales (direct). (2) Community and government actors perceive that factors driving governments’ preference for incremental-resist adaptation include electoral short-termism, linear planning, and conservative government culture.

Adaptive water governance scholarship aspires to flexible and responsive governance that is inclusive and supports learning and collaboration among a wide range of stakeholders. Much of this scholarship assumes that polycentric arrangements will facilitate these characteristics as different nodes of decision making adapt and respond to challenges within their arena of authority. However, in the case of both adaptive water governance and polycentricity, there are growing questions as to whether the reality matches the theoretical ideal. Drawing on a case study of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin, we introduce the concept of a polycentric spectrum to distinguish between systems that resist change from those that enable more adaptive transformative change. In our case study, an overarching national agenda of water reform has generated a perpetual cycle of reviews and inquiries into water governance. We examined 34 reviews conducted since 2004, asking whether, how, and to what extent these recommendations are enabling governance adaptation and transformation versus maintaining conventional paradigms. Our analysis revealed problem-solving logics that have dominated water governance for decades to stymie efforts to move toward the more adaptive and transformative forms of governance required to address two key areas of reform: climate change and First Nations’ water justice. Despite an acknowledged need for substantive reforms, inquiry recommendations perpetuate technocratic (for climate change) or administrative rationalist (for First Nations) approaches. We argue that the reform agenda needs to be directed away from governments as the sole agents of change through deliberate and strategic efforts to engage local level and non-state actors who are central to adaptive water governance. This would require debate about reforms to move beyond how water is allocated and optimized to address how power is redistributed in the system. Our analysis questions whether polycentricity alone is sufficient to enable normatively desirable adaptive water governance, suggesting the need for future work to consider whether other organizing concepts, such as water justice might be required.

Identifying the conditions for social learning in water governance in regional Australia

This paper explores the ways water governance adapts to changing social values and political imperatives by examining the case of water policy reforms in Australia’s Murray Darling Basin. Over more than two decades, Australia’s water reforms have explicitly aimed to promote ecological sustainability and economic efficiency, attempting to balance pro-market, micro-economic reforms with broader social and sustainability goals. Despite the formality of Australia’s intergovernmental agreements, water reforms have been expensive and heavily contested, experiencing many implementation challenges. However, water market reforms have generally been regarded as successful, enabling the reallocation of water for environmental and extractive uses, contributing to flexibility and adaptive capacity. Recognising that discursive contestation is central to policy development, the paper documents the way the reform processes have attempted to broker compromises between three competing policy paradigms—national development, economic rationalism and environmentalism. These inherent tensions resulted in prolonged contests for influence over policy directions long after formal statements of policy intent by Governments. Given that climate change is driving the need for water governance reforms, the paper looks to what lessons can be learnt about the redesigns of meta-governance arrangements, including through structured commitments to independent audits and evaluations that can provide the feedback needed for adaptive governance and policy learning.

Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin extends over one million square kilometers and supports almost three-quarters of the country’s irrigated agricultural land. Like the Colorado River in America and the Yellow River in China, the Murray–Darling Basin runs across a number of jurisdictional boundaries, and has been a focus for national water reforms for many years. The Murray–Darling Basin Plan is the culmination of more than two decades of water reform experience in Australia. It was adopted by the Commonwealth Water Minister in 2012 to rebalance use of water resources and create a more sustainable footing for a healthy working Basin. The Basin Plan was based on the best science at the time, which was endorsed by peer review. The key features of the Basin Plan that are integrated into its design are optimizing social, economic and environmental (triple bottom line) outcomes; improving transparency of decision-making and flexible and adaptive management. As a result of widespread consultation, the Basin Plan also included suggestions from jurisdictions and communities that served to better balance the competing interests for water resources, and provided a clearly defined timetable for implementation to create certainty for communities and investment. The Basin Plan commenced on 29 November 2012, and early implementation activities are well progressed, meaning that water resources are already better positioned to cope with major drought. Looking forward, continued support for Basin Plan reforms from governments and communities will be an ongoing challenge for implementation. Similarly, separating out the effects of the Basin Plan from other external effects on the social and economic well-being of Basin communities will be a challenge when evaluating whether the Basin Plan has achieved its triple bottom line outcomes and objectives.

In the Australian Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) the combination of severe and prolonged droughts and historic water management decisions to divert water for cultivation stressed water resources in such an intensive manner that wetlands went dry and rivers are now far from a natural flow. More appropriate water management policies must be implemented to restore ecological function. However, with 39 % of Australia’s total value of agricultural production, transitions in use need to be managed to minimise economic and social impacts on basin communities while they adjust. Recent studies estimate that industries with high water usage but lower or more volatile value products will be impacted more than higher value products. Therefore, this study’s focus is to analyse different water management policies and their impacts on agricultural production, particularly changes in production of water low value and water high value crops and agricultural water consumption. By applying the Water Integrated Market (WatIM)-Model, benefits and costs of water management policies can be evaluated by identifying changes in quantities, prices and economic welfare, such as consumer and producer surplus. The WatIM-Model is a multi-market model combining water low and water high value crop markets and the water market with its supply and demand. Since the MDB is a complex system with different types of agriculture and water sharing rules in each catchment, economic variables are aggregated in the WatIMModel to examine overall trends and changes in the MDB. By the assumption that policy decisions on one market cause reactions on prices, supply and demand on other markets, market interdependencies can be derived. With these results, the merit of shifting production from water low value crops to water high value crops is examined and advantages and disadvantages of water management policies can be determined. This enables refinement of water management policies to optimise social, economic and environmental outcomes.