Managing the Murray‐Darling Basin

Abstract

Within the Murray-Darling Basin lie Australia's most important water and land resources as well as some of the country's most serious resource management problems. This paper summarises the importance of the resource-based industries, especially agriculture. The major agricultural and water resource problems are outlined, with most attention being paid to salinity. Critical to the problems and their solution are the institutional arrangements for the management of this large interstate river basin. The River Murray Waters Agreement, dating from 1914, has had limited success in tackling the basin's problems, because of its limited geographical and functional scope, especially in the area of water quality. The growing severity of the latter problems, especially salinity, resulted in the 1987 signing of the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement to promote and coordinate the management of the basin's water, land and environmental resources. As it is concerned with the basin as a whole, its success is dependent on the full cooperation of the Commonwealth and three state governments involved.

How integrated is river basin management?

“…River basin (21 ) Basin (/wide) (6) Catchment (3) Management (25) Planning (6) Development (3) Unified (1) Ecosystem (2) River (1) Watershed (1) Floodplain (1) Water resources (1) Modeling (1) Approach (1) arrangements is often cited as critical to the success of management strategies (Adams 1985, Mitchell 1987, Crabb 1988, Mitchell and Pigram 1989. Table 1 summarizes the wide range of terminology that has been used and shows that the phrase most frequently used to describe integrated basin management is "river basin management."…”

Managing Australia’s Major Natural Resource: The Murray-Darling Basin

“…The annual value of primary and secondary production in the Basin is of the order of $10 000 million, which is between 30 and 40 per cent of total Australian production from resource based industries, including some 50 per cent of the nation's gross value of agricultural production. Whatever parameters are used, it is clear that the Murray-Darling Basin makes a major contribution to the Australian economy (Crabb, 1988).…”