What’s next for Australia’s water management?

Abstract

Australia's water management futures are again under discussion as drought impacts and bushfires hit communities. Water and ecological system limits are being reached resulting in fish kills and dwindling water levels in storages. Awareness is also rising around the inequities in current water governance regimes for First Peoples across the Australian continent and beyond. Here we provide a brief overview and research on: the ingenuity of Indigenous waterscape and landscape knowledge and practices to care for country and community, including the development of agricultural systems and sophisticated fish and eel trapping systems that are thousands of years old; the devastating impacts of colonisation on First Peoples, their country and ability to maintain some cultural practices; and the ongoing contestation over water governance, right from Federation, including the eight waves of water reforms in the Murray-Darling Basin. Current challenges and needs for reform are also presented including: hydrological scientific uncertainties, such as around return flows and their adjustment due to irrigation infrastructure efficiency increases, and new design methodologies, such as for flood estimation inputs to hydraulic models; adjusting current governance regimes of sustainable diversion limits and water markets to provide alternative value to Australia, beyond economic value drivers, that better respond to the benefit of all basin communities in the face of ongoing extreme climate variability and climate change; and determining positive ways forward for truly valuing and allowing First Peoples' knowledge, practices, culture and law to provide a basis for developing the next waves of Australia's water management reform journey.

Indigenous Water Engineering and Aquaculture Systems in Australia: The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape and Baiame’s Ngunnhu (the Brewarrina Aboriginal Fish Traps)

“…Such design is being included in education at all levels. The principles and inspiration from these examples and others across ancient living water systems can facilitate means of creating more effective Country-centered and "two-ways" governance systems, help to bridge knowledges in today's world and offer open space for listening to Indigenous leaders (Bawaka et al 2015;Daniell and Daniell 2019;RiverOfLife et al 2021). This is a holistic and cybernetic approach that has more universal application when linked to the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN 2018) and the pursuit of the achievement of the SDGs in safe, responsible and sustainable ways (Daniell et al 2022).…”