Socio-hydrologic drivers of the pendulum swing between agricultural development and environmental health: a case study from Murrumbidgee River basin, Australia

Abstract

Abstract. This paper presents a case study centred on the Murrumbidgee River basin in eastern Australia. It illustrates the dynamics of the balance between water extraction and use for food production, and efforts to mitigate and reverse consequent degradation of the riparian environment. In particular, the paper traces the history of a pendulum swing between an exclusive focus on agricultural development and food production in the initial stages and its attendant socioeconomic benefits, followed by the gradual realization of the adverse environmental impacts, subsequent efforts to mitigate these with the use of remedial measures, and ultimately concerted efforts and externally imposed solutions to restore environmental health and ecosystem services. The 100-year history of development within the Murrumbidgee is divided into four eras, each underpinned by the dominance of different values and norms and turning points characterized by their changes. The various stages of development can be characterized by the dominance, in turn, of infrastructure systems, policy frameworks, economic instruments, and technological solutions. The paper argues that, to avoid these costly pendulum swings, management needs to be underpinned by long-term coupled socio-hydrologic system models that explicitly include the two-way coupling between human and hydrological systems, including the slow evolution of human values and norms relating to water and the environment. Such coupled human-water system models can provide insights into dominant controls of the trajectory of their co-evolution in a given system, and can also be used to interpret patterns of co-evolution of such coupled systems in different places across gradients of climatic, socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions, and in this way to help develop generalizable understanding.

Debates—Perspectives on socio‐hydrology: Socio‐hydrologic modeling: Tradeoffs, hypothesis testing, and validation

“…Recent literature has begun to validate the core hypothesis through case studies of individual regions [e.g., Kandasamy et al, 2014;Liu et al, 2014]. A synthesis of many case studies showed that four dominant water patterns existed in regions of water crisis [Srinivasan et al, 2012], which leads credence to the premise that common dynamics may emerge across different regions.…”

Moving sociohydrology forward: a synthesis across studies

“…Several studies explored two-way coupling in specific regions: in Chennai, India (Srinivasan, 2015); Portland, Oregon, in the US (Chang et al, 2014); the Murrumbidgee in eastern Australia (Elshafei et al, 2014;Kandasamy et al, 2014;van Emmerik et al, 2014); the Toolibin catchment in western Australia (Elshafei et al, 2014); and Saskatchewan in Canada (Gober and Wheater, 2014). In the majority of these studies, the focus was on water scarcity generated primarily by human water demands.…”

“…In fact, hydrologic flows in these systems could not be predicted without understanding how preferences have changed. Kandasamy et al (2014) analyze the dynamics of the Murrumbidgee over a 100-year time period. They find that social values and norms have shifted in favor of preserving the environment.…”

Socio-hydrological perspectives of the co-evolution of humans and groundwater in Cangzhou, North China Plain

“…Through adaption processes, humans co-evolve with the hydrological system, resulting in a pendulum swing from equilibrium in the human-water system (Kandasamy et al, 2014;Sivapalan, 2015). Kandasamy et al (2014) first characterized the concept of the pendulum swing by tracing the 100-year history of the competition for water between agricultural development and environmental health in the Murrumbidgee River basin.…”

“…Kandasamy et al (2014) first characterized the concept of the pendulum swing by tracing the 100-year history of the competition for water between agricultural development and environmental health in the Murrumbidgee River basin. Similar dynamics were also found in the humanwater system in the arid Tarim River basin (Liu et al, 2014) and in human-flood interactions (Baldassarre et al, 2015).…”