The Water Governance Research Initiative

7/28/2019 The Water Governance Research Initiative

1/26

Water Governance Research Initiative Summary Paper No. 1

The Water Governance Research InitiativeObjectives and Activities

This paper highlights the objectives and activities of

the National Water Governance Research Initiative.

The Initiative was a theme of the NCCARF Water

Resources and Freshwater Biodiversity Adaptation

Research Network (www.nccarf.edu.au/water/node/5)

and ran from December 2009 to December 2011.

The overarching intentions were to: (a) create a

community of conversation about water governance in

Australia, (b) build collaborative research links, (c)create opportunities for co-researching and

information sharing, and (d) provide opportunities for

early-career researchers (ECRs) to participate in a

national network of researchers and research-users.

Four participatory workshops brought water

governance researchers and policy practitioners

together to create a research network. The first

workshop, in November 2010, explored the needs and

priorities of water governance research in Australia

and created a research agenda aligned with research

capability. Two workshops in April 2011 weredesigned to support early-career researchers and

begin linking theory to practice. A range of disciplinary

perspectives grounded in participants' research were

presented, providing interactive capacity-building

experiences. The final workshop, in November 2011,

invited involvement from a wider audience (including

policy, NGO and private sector practitioners),

showcasing different theoretical approaches to water

governance from a range of topics, to inform new

governance and research practices.

The WGRI network members were also able to shapethe development of the initiative through participation

in two online surveys. The surveys were designed to

build a profile of the network members based on

professional backgrounds and research interests,

explore levels of engagement in collaborative water

governance research and distil the critical issues

facing water governance research and practice in

Australia.

Over the two years, the project team communicated

and documented the project process through a series

of briefing papers, which were made available to allparticipants and the public. These papers build a case

for a more dedicated research program on water

governance in Australia.

Outcomes

Agendas for water governance research and practice

were the main outcomes of the Initiative, detailed in

Summary Paper 2. These were collaboratively

developed through participatory workshops and are a

coherent set of policy and research imperatives

emerging from the community of conversation.

A special journal issue ofWater Resources

Management, edited by the Initiative's coordinators,

featured contributions from members of the network.

This compilation appraises the systemic and adaptive

effectiveness of water governance institutions. A

second special issue ofThe Journal of Water Law

featured several ECR articles.

A highlight was the opportunity to support a group of

early-career researchers in co-authoring a journal

paper about their pathways to water governance

research. The support for ECRs met our objectives,

and from these a self-organising community of

practice has emerged, with ongoing activities reportedat http://freshwatergovernance.wordpress.com.

Members of the Network have reported new research

collaborations being formed directly as a result of

participating in the Initiative, including the

aforementioned ECR Network and other research

projects and publications.

Adopting an action research approach, the project

team and Network members engaged in a series of

workshops, conversations, online surveys and journal

writing sessions to create a reflective community of

conversations potentially leading to practice in water

governance research. The level of participation and

quality of engagement indicates that there remains a

vital interest amongst water researchers and research

users in experiencing, networking and developing

cross-disciplinary research opportunities to address

emergent water governance concerns.

Further Information

Philip Wallis*, Ray Ison,Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University

[email protected] Lee GoddenMelbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Water Governance Research Initiative, 2012
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


2/26


Contents

This pack contains the documented outputs of the Water Governance Research Initiative, including a series ofbriefing papers produced as inputs to or outputs from Initiative workshops. The headline messages are synthesisedin two summary papers and a full list of Initiative-related publications are included.

Summary Paper No. 1: The Water Governance Research Initiative

Summary Paper No. 2: Policy imperatives for water governance in Australia

Briefing Paper No. 1: Strengthening water governance in Australia Briefing Paper No. 2: Water governance research priorities

Briefing Paper No. 3: Perspectives on water governance research

Briefing Paper No. 4: Water governance research for transformation

Briefing Paper No. 5: Water Governance Research Initiative: 2010-2012

Publications: List of initiative publications

Acknowledgements

The success of the Initiative has been made possible by the enthusiastic participation of its members, who havecontributed in a myriad of ways: attending workshops, presenting seminars, authoring papers, providing advice and

guidance, and sharing their ideas on water governance.In particular, we would like to acknowledge the support of our reference group: Annie Bolitho, Alex Gardner, BrianHead, Sue Jackson, Jennifer McKay, Carla Mooney, Jamie Pittock and Adrian Walsh. Reference group memberswere invited to offer a perspective on water governance from each of Australia's states and territories, and werealso active participants in the Initiative.

We would also like to thank Samantha Capon, Brendan Edgar and Stuart Bunn, the coordinators and convener ofthe NCCARF Water Resources and Freshwater Biodiversity Adaptation Research Network, without whose supportthis would not have been possible. We also thank Nicole Reichelt who helped to finalise these Initiative outputs.

About us

The Water Governance Research Initiative was created as the governance theme of the NCCARF WaterResources and Freshwater Biodiversity Adaptation Research Network. The Initiative was coordinated by:

Lee GoddenProfessor, LawMelbourne Law SchoolThe University of [email protected]

Ray IsonProfessor, Systems for SustainabilityMonash Sustainability InstituteMonash University, [email protected]

Philip Wallis

Research FellowMonash Sustainability InstituteMonash University, [email protected]

Naomi Rubenstein

Research AssistantMonash Sustainability InstituteMonash University, [email protected]


3/26


Policy Imperatives for Water Governance in AustraliaFraming the policy context

Fostering the conditions for effective water

governance in Australian policy is about recognising

that water management issues occur within complex,

dynamic and uncertain situations; that is, in the

context of a wicked problem. Water policy in

Australia over the past three decades has been

framed within a market-based perspective that views

policy inadequacies as market failures and has

traditionally drawn on rational scientific input toprovide value free research for developing policy.

This perspective does not capture failures and

opportunities that exist beyond economic markets in a

whole-of-system approach to include the relationships

within and between social-cultural, institutional,

economic and ecological systems.

Policy implications

Setting water governance policy within a wicked

problem framework demands new ways of developing

and implementing policy. Such framing emphasisesthe need for reflexive social learning to influence

transitions in research and policy for greater

adaptability to ever-changing conditions. Systemic

policy development and implementation involves

engagement with a wide range of research and policy

stakeholders across water catchments including the

integration of knowledge and value systems from

academia, science, government and catchment

communities. Diverse conversations can then occur

around water governance which opens up and makes

visible the real-world complexity of natural resourcemanagement. This allows for the expansion of the

socio-political context of stakeholder views and

democratises decision making for more responsive

policy. Questions around whose knowledge and

evidence counts and whose knowledge and evidence

are marginalised during the policy process can be

asked and scrutinised. These sentiments resonate

with those presenters who participated in the Early

Career Research Workshop during the National Water

Governance Research Initiative in 2011. The rational

planning model has traditionally disregarded these

fundamental political aspects of research and policy

where policy practitioners working under this model

can become locked-in to inflexible, linear and

technocratic approaches.

Policy recommendations

Based on the policy context and implications for water

governance in Australia in conjunction with the

outcomes of the National Water Governance

Research Initiative, we offer the following policy and

research reforms and recommendations:

National water institutions

Expand the objectives of the National Water

Commission to more fully support and fund future

water governance research, continue to build

professional and community networks around water

management and act as an independent assessor of

water reform in Australia to increase accountability,

compliance and monitoring.

Policy praxis

Foster robust, extensive and strategic stakeholder

participation and public engagement to include

indigenous and marginalised communities during the

policy process. Integrate self-reflexive relational

processes involving individuals, social groups andorganisations for holistic engagement, learning and

cultural change in water governance matters as part

of a systemic social learning agenda to build adaptive

capacity in policy processes. Intentional and fortuitous

social learning practices can help to build innovative

ways of knowing and develop new relational

capacities in terms of understanding organisational

roles and forms of learning (Pahl-Wostl et al., 2008).

Such processes may create communities of interest,

conversation and practice that can help to progress

innovative institutional design that is fit for purpose

within and beyond the water sector. Investment in

social learning, and other alternative and /or

complementary governance mechanisms offers a

means for developing adaptive institutions with

greater response opportunities to address water

issues.

Currently there is no national policy platform that

directly links decision-making and regulation across

sectors to create joined up policy systems (Pittock,

2011). We recommend the development of an

initiative that would seek to integrate water policy with

other relevant policy areas (e.g. climate change and

energy) for comprehensive, linked policy responses to

sustainability issues.


4/26


Governance research

It is critical that research continues to capture

experimentation in social learning processes through

adopting comparative and case-orientated research

methodologies. It became apparent during the WGRI

workshops and feedback from participant surveys that

there is a need to invest in explorations of best

practice in flexible governance. This could include

sponsoring international research for policy lessons,supporting internships in government for researchers

and post graduates and establishing researcher links

with professional organisations to understand and

develop knowledge brokering. These explorations

would help to identify governance features that

promote more responsive NRM planning, particularly

involving local people and how to develop effective

connections between agencies and stakeholders

through leadership and facilitation. There is also a

need to develop government standards for data and

research archiving for interdisciplinary researchprojects with better public access to information.

Such a research policy agenda has been successfully

demonstrated in the United Kingdom through the

Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (RELU)

(Phillipson et al., 2011). Following similar lines to our

recommendations, this program invested in training

and career development for interdisciplinary

researchers through dedicated studentships and

fellowship schemes. It also pioneered collaborations

between social and natural sciences providing a

strategic role for social scientists in problem framing,stakeholder engagement and analysing complex

socio-technical systems. Projects were specifically

prepared for data sharing to build cohesive data sets

and facilitate information harvesting. The outcomes of

such practices have lead to capacity building in

interdisciplinary research, knowledge exchanges and

integrated knowledge (Phillipson et al., 2011). Under

such an agenda research products provide

evidence-based knowledge to inform multiple policy

communities and stakeholders.

References

Fischer, F. 2003. Beyond empiricism: policy analysis as

deliberative practice in Hajer M and Wagenaar H (eds)

Deliberative policy analysis Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge: 20927

Pahl-Wostl, C., E. Mostert, and D. Tbara. 2008. The growing

importance of social learning in water resources management

and sustainability science. Ecology and Society 13(1): 24.

[online] URL:

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss1/art24/

Pittock, J., 2011. National climate change policies and sustainable

water management: Conflicts and synergies. Ecol & Society 16,

25.

Phillipson J. Lowe P. and Liddon A. 2011. Adventures in Science:

Interdisciplinarity and knowledge exchange in the Relu

Programme, Rural Economy and Land Use Programme

[online PDF] http://bit.ly/Pfgilu.

Sharp L, McDonald A, Sim P, Knamiller C, Sefton C, Wong S.

2011. Positivism, post-positivism and domestic water demand:

interrelating science across the paradigmatic divide.

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36

(4):501515.

Further Information

Philip Wallis*, Ray Ison,Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University

[email protected] Lee GoddenMelbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne


Network participants contributing to policy recommendations


5/26

Water Governance Research Initiative Briefing Paper No. 1

Strengthening Water Governance in AustraliaIntroduction

This briefing paper presents a case for establishing a

dedicated program of research on water governance

in Australia. Particular attention is paid to the potential

forsocial learningto play a greater role in improving

future governance outcomes.

It is envisaged that research would have nation-wide

relevance, and give emphasis to practical solutions

and on-ground benefits. The Murray-Darling Basin

(MDB), as a hotspot in the current public debate,

would be one of the focal points of any research

portfolio but not isolated from the research needs of

urban, groundwater and other State contexts.

Australias water crisis is discussed here as an issue

that is highly resistant to resolution (a wicked

problem). Research activities to-date have shone a

spotlight on the crisis, but contributed little to

addressing underlying water governance

fundamentals.

This paper highlights water governance as animportant arena of research that warrants greater

scrutiny. We refer to watergovernance rather than

management because it encompasses all available

means of influencing social change. It is an active

concept and extends to putting theory into practice.

We suggest that social learning learning processes

among a group of people who seek to improve a

common situation and take action collectively is a

critical missing element in the current water reforms.

We emphasise the pressing need to work out how to

design social learning into existing institutional

arrangements, whichspan policies and objectives,

laws, rules, regulations, organisations, policy

mechanisms, and norms, traditions, practices and

customs.

What Water Crisis?

Water management has been described as a wicked

problem that is, a problem that is characterised by

complexity, connectedness, conflict and multiple

perspectives. The five headline messages presented

here on the nature and scale of Australias water crisis

set the context for the sections that follow on the need

for water governance research, including social

learning as part of ongoing water governance reform.

The pressure to transfer water to urban centres and

return water to the environment has become more

pronounced in recent years in the face of prolonged

and widespread drought, increasing competition for

water, and heightened public concern about climate

change. While a substantial body of knowledge about

the extent and severity of water resource degradation

has long existed, policy-makers and researchers havebeen spurred to learn more about water issues and

the suite of options available for tackling the problem.

What emerges is a dramatic picture, and one that

brings into sharp focus the need to invest greater

effort in understanding and refining aspects of water

governance:

1. Development has been based on gross over-

estimates of the total water resource available

Planning for the major phases of settlement and

associated water resource development is now knownto have been based on a period that was much wetter

than the long-run average. The quantity and quality of

water inflows to storages has been declining in both

rural and urban settings. This trend is exacerbated by

global warming, including through greater incidence

and severity of bushfires.

2. Surface water and groundwater systems have

been treated independently

Licensing arrangements to extract water have treated

surface and ground water as separate and

unconnected systems. This has resulted in higher

levels of extraction and double accounting. Licences

to pump groundwater have typically been granted

1

Developing this Briefing Paper

This paper is informed by the outcomes of a series of

workshops convened by Uniwater, a partnership

between Monash University and the University of

Melbourne; and the Centre for Resources, Energy

and Environmental Law (University of Melbourne).

The 44 workshop participants spanned a broad

spectrum of interests in the social and policy aspects

of water reform, and were collectively well informed

about ke issues and research investments.


6/26


without consideration of adverse flow-on effects to

surface waters.

3. Water trading has activated sleeper licences

and increased groundwater pumping and on-

farm water collection

Water trading has stimulated the widespread sale and

activation of licences not used previously in practice(sleeper licences) and, at the same time, encouraged

greater exploitation of groundwater resources and

harvesting of on-farm water.

4. Water use efficiency investments have

stimulated further development

Urban and rural investment in water use efficiency

measures has been significant in recent years.

Intensification and expansion of land development has

tended to occur in concert, despite total environmental

allocations remaining well below that required torestore ecological function.

5. Response strategies have implications for

catchment water yields

Taking action to repair land and water degradation

and capture carbon, especially through large-scale

tree planting, is likely to adversely affect catchment

water yields.

Water Governance

Historically, institutions for water allocation and

management in Australia have focused on settlement

and industry development. Primary legislation and

organisational frameworks have been largely state-

based, and actions to holistically address water issues

at national scale were sporadic. Three tipping points

are discussed here in the reshaping of the institutional

arrangements, with emphasis on more recent

developments.

Firstly, the Council of Australian Governments

(COAG) announced landmark water reforms in 1994.

This marked a significant shift to more centrally

directed policy, but its delivery remained largely a

state-based matter. Tied federal funds gave

substantial impetus for implementation in the initial

years of these reforms.

The institutional landscape has been progressively

shaped by water and related natural resource

management (NRM) policy. Local and regional level

organisations in both rural and urban settings have

proliferated and formed partnership approaches with

higher institutional levels. Top down structures and

processes were initially de-emphasised, at least inrhetoric, with the aim that more decentralised

approaches to decision-making and delivery would

achieve greater alignment with and responsiveness to

local issues and needs. Evidence suggests the

pendulum may now be swinging back towards tighter

central control

In 2004, COAG signed the National Water Initiative

(NWI) as a more cohesive national approach to the

way Australia manages, measures, plans for, prices,

and trades water. Initial assessments were broadly

supportive of its coverage, intent and attempt to

integrate ecological, economic and social imperatives,

yet cautious about the institutional capacity for its

implementation. Hussey and Dovers (2007)

highlighted that many tensions and implementation

difficulties remained, and that assumptions about

implementation were being unsettled by realisations of

significant deficits of capacity and knowledge.

The recent reform agenda in the MDB has relied

primarily on developing a system of property rights to

extract and use water, and the markets to trade theserights. Other significant aspects include the

establishment of catchment-scale planning as the

central platform for defining environmental water

needs and setting sustainable limits to guide the

extraction and reallocation of water. In practice,

planning approaches have differed greatly between

states and in different water use contexts; most

notably between regulated and unregulated rivers.

Engagement with communities has varied widely in

both scale and approach, and has been characterised

by conflict, poor design, and dissatisfaction. Some

organisational reform has also been attempted,

including separating water regulation from service

delivery, and putting in place management

arrangements for environmental water delivery.

The reform agenda was given further impetus with the

federal Water Act 2007. It set tight parameters for

developing a water management plan for the MDB,

and the accreditation of individual catchment plans

nested within this strategic framework. The plan must

include rules for the operation of basin-wide water

markets, and for delivering environmental water.Primary regulatory responsibility is given to the

Murray-Darling Basin Authority (as a new

Commonwealth body).

The legislation was accompanied by a substantial

investment package. The primary focus of investment

was on achieving water savings and addressing over-

allocation through irrigation efficiency works and direct

buy-back of entitlements on the market. The Act

established the Commonwealth Environmental Water

Holder to manage Commonwealth-owned

environmental water both within and outside the MDB.Spending has proceeded well ahead of basin-wide

and individual catchment planning proscribed under

the same legislation.

2


7/26


In summary, almost two decades have elapsed since

the original water reform agenda commenced.

Attention to social and institutional dimensions of this

collective agenda has been inadequate, and progress

on sustainability aspects has been slow.

Implementation is characterised by considerable

conflict and even policy failure. Existing institutions for

water management have been effectively by-passedin some cases, while new and potentially competing

institutions have been created. Further, the

mechanisms used to deliver environmental water, and

the way systems are managed, leave environmental

water highly vulnerable to systemic shocks, especially

under climate change scenarios.

Social Learning

The need to move towards sustainable water

governance in Australia is urgent and well

documented. For water governance to work,institutions need to have the capacity to integrate

across values (social, cultural, ecological, economic)

and across scales and boundaries (organisational,

catchment, communities, global). At the same time,

they need to continually adapt to change and

emerging priorities.

A review on tackling wicked problems by the

Australian Public Service (APS) highlights the central

importance of governance. It notes the need to work

across both internal and external organisational

boundaries, and engage citizens and stakeholders inpolicy-making and implementation. Changing the

behaviour of groups of citizens or all citizens is

acknowledged as part of the solution. The findings

stress that there are no quick fixes and simple

solutions, and that more sophisticated tools and

responses are needed.

The APS review concludes that wicked problems

therefore require innovative, comprehensive solutions

that can be modified in the light of experience and on-

the-ground feedback. This proves challenging to

traditional models of governance.

Woodhill (2008) comments on the need for

institutional transformation in addressing complex

public policy problems stressing that institutions

cannot necessarily be effectively changed in a neatly

planned top-down manner. Complexity and systems

thinking has a central role to play in intervening in

wicked problem situations in structured yet non-linear

ways.

Many of the strategies currently employed in

addressing the water crisis, like market-basedinstruments, have significant limitations. The

strategies in use are shaped by how issues are

framed in the first instance. There is a need to revisit

both the framing of the issues and the

appropriateness of the strategies employed.

European research suggests using social learning as

a governance mechanism to support adaptive

management in wicked situations (SLIM, 2004). The

work focused on how the following six variables

shaped issues and transformed situations where

stakeholders were concerned with sustainable water

managing at catchment scale:

Starting conditions (historical context)

Stakeholding (not just who, but actively building

stakes in complex issues)

Facilitation (through people or objects)

Institutions and policies

Ecological constraints (how and by whom

ecological knowledge is constructed)

Learning processes (how learning happens

mediates the transformation of complex situations)

One of its key research outcomes was that

institutional complexity can constrain social

transformation. It does so by affecting the

development of stakeholding and the way in which

change occurs. The complexity can produce

unintended consequences, including policy conflict,

inability to translate policies into local action and the

breakdown or loss of social and relational capital.

In Australia, there is a need to give much greaterattention to the practice of governing. The practice of

governing can be likened to an orchestra delivering an

effective performance sustained over time. This is an

arena of water reform that has been paid little regard

to-date. In Australia, unlike Europe, social learning

has not been explicitly embedded or designed into

water policy and governance, and will be critical as a

means of investigating multi-pronged approaches that

operate beyond a market-preference mode of

resource allocation. It is also important to consider the

value that should be placed on existing institutions,like the network of 56 regional NRM bodies, and the

relational capital established through their operation

as the water reforms take shape.

The wickedness of the water crisis will only continue

to escalate over the coming years as understanding of

the predicted impacts of climate change on water

resources increases. The time is ripe to re-assess the

effectiveness of approaches taken to-date; and in

particular to explore and develop adaptive institutional

arrangements which create the space and capacity for

achieving broad scale and ongoing change, which issystemically desirable and culturally feasible.

3


8/26


A Call for Research Partners & Investors

We invite your feedback on and interest in advancing

the agenda put forward in this briefing paper. A

prospective program of research spanning a 3-year

period is outlined here to stimulate further

conversation.

Aims

To improve understanding about Australias water

crisis as a wicked problem that requires specificattention to water governance

To reveal the systemic implications of institutional

complexity and devise ways to minimiseunintended consequences

To demonstrate how to design social learning into

future governance arrangements

To identify the costs and benefits of refining water

governance and investing in social learning, and

the implications for on-ground outcomes

Key Elements

Develop and test rules of thumb (heuristic devices)

for engaging stakeholders in understanding wickedproblems

Identify the institutional factors that constrain or

enhance social learning (e.g. metrics-focus,stakeholder standing)

Explore how these institutional factors relate to

different framings on governance (e.g. market-based instruments, rights, share vs. volume,environment as user, critical human needs,sustainability)

Conceptualise and cost alternative approaches to

or systems for planning and managing catchmentsthat address the identified constraints to sociallearning

Establish minimum conditions (e.g. powers,

capacities) for healthy governance at differentlevels

Trial a practice model for designing social learning

into institutional arrangements at different scales

for sustainable water governance in the context ofthe future Murray-Darling Basin Plan in action

Prepare a best practice guide on learning by

design for water policy-makers, including casestudy examples linking design elements to on-ground outcomes

Principles for Research Conduct

Be theory-informed, replicable and practice-

focused

Put in place feedback loops to progressively inform

and shape the process of water reform

Encourage multiple perspectives arising fromdifferent disciplinary areas

Support the formation of and co-learning with

communities of practice (horizontally and vertically)

Recognise ethical imperatives such as how to

engage stakeholders with little or no voice indecision-making processes

Manage initial starting conditions involve key

policy makers from the beginning.

Anticipated Outcomes

Best practice guide on learning by design withcase study examples (in plain-English style)

A suite of key recommendations for actioning by

policy-makers

Heuristic devices for stakeholder engagement

New concepts and language for communicating

across disciplines

A national water governance research agenda

with significant stakeholding by an enthusiastic

community of conversation

Greater clarity about the options for (and benefits

and costs of) refining water governance and

designing social learning into Australias

institutional arrangements across scales,

boundaries and interests

Informed and active communities of practice, and

greater inclusivity of the breadth of interests in

water governance and water reform processes

Governance arrangements more suited to a

broader conceptual and aesthetic understanding

of water and recognition that the watergovernance imperative is that of a coupled, co-

evolutionary socio-ecological system

Further Information

Naomi Rubenstein, Philip Wallis*, Ray IsonMonash Sustainability InstituteMonash University,[email protected]

Lee GoddenMelbourne Law SchoolThe University of Melbourne

Key References

Australian Public Service Commission (2007) Tackling Wicked

Problems: A Public Policy Perspective. Canberra.

Hussey K and Dovers S. (eds) (2007) Managing Water for

Australia: The Social and Institutional Challenges. CSIRO

Publishing, Collingwood Victoria.

SLIM (2004) SLIM Framework: Social Learning as a Policy

Approach for Sustainable Use of Water (available at

http://slim.open.ac.uk).

Woodhill J. (2008) How institutions evolve: shaping behaviour.

The Broker, 10: 4-8.


4


9/26


10/26


2. Greater attention to social research in

water governance, and opportunities for

inter- and trans- disciplinary engagement.

For those engaged in social and cultural research,

there is an expressed frustration at the ongoing

dominance of the hard sciences within the water

governance framework. There is a need for moreopportunities for better coordinated social science

research with more purposeful interaction with water

managers/ organisations and biophysical science. As

one participant explained:

A key issue for me is that although there is growing

recognition of the need for more social and cultural

knowledge to be applied in water planning and

management, there is still a strong core of scientistic

fundamentalism, a profound belief in the essential

correctness and proper dominance of the scientific

rational world view, which makes it easy to dismisshermeneutic, philosophical, spiritual, narrative and

situated knowledges as merely subjective and a waste of

time and funding that detracts from 'real action' on water.

Interestingly, survey results indicate that many water

governance researchers have moved into social

sciences from engineering or physical sciences as

they seek to explore sustainability questions from an

interdisciplinary and systemic perspective, e.g.:

Originally trained in engineering, then in town planning

and then in highway engineering, [I] moved into social

sciences / behavioural / administration research becauseI was interested in how and why decisions were made

and what were outcomes needed to explore the social

behavioural aspects of engineering systems

development.

The survey results show most researchers have

experience in some form of collaborative research (i.e.

disciplinary, multi-, inter- and trans- disciplinary), and

many are seeking to develop their capabilities in inter-

and trans- disciplinary research (Table 1).

Table 1: Modes of collaborative research in which respondents

are seeking to develop their capability.

In which of these areas are you seeking to develop your capability?

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

Disciplinary Multi-disciplinary Inter-disciplinary Trans-disciplinary

However, despite this desire, respondents claim that

support for collaboration is, in reality, limited. Barriers

include a lack of dedicated funding, prevailing reward

structures, and the dominant culture of many

organisations, including universities:

Even though the organisation I belong to says it

supports collaboration, the project funding model Iwork [in] does not give me the time or the funding to

more actively pursue collaboration.

There are still insufficient incentives at institutional

level to entice sufficient critical mass of people to

engage in interdisciplinary/ transdisciplinary

research. This also applies to funding bodies such

as ARC and others which do not promote this type

of research.

Research Priority: develop means of support for

collaborative inter- and trans- disciplinary endeavoursthat genuinely draw on both the physical and social

sciences.

3. Integration of waters multiple values into

the water governance framework

There is a paucity of effective integration of

community values and best-practice community

engagement in water governance. There is still poor

integration of regional priorities and stakeholder

values in policy and decision-making. Incorporating

different perspectives into goal setting and decision-making can reveal common interests, lead to more

appropriate solutions and help minimise conflict.

Community values, norms, expectations, knowledge,

and understandings are dynamic. A better

understanding is needed of the means to capture,

unpack and comprehend these ever-changing

dynamics. More research is required into how to

communicate and integrate values into decision-

making processes at all stages and in ways that are

accessible to different stakeholders. Specific areas of

concern are the genuine engagement of indigenous

people in water governance and the growing mistrust

and division between rural and urban areas. Important

questions arising in the water governance context

include:

How do cultures and communities developparticular values and visions for water futures,and how are they shared and communicated?

Where, when and how does communityengagement need to be used in thegovernance and planning processes to beeffective?

How can researchers (a) engage with, andprioritise, complex values systems and (b)transfer values and norms into framing?

2


11/26


How are water problems framed in relation toconcepts of social justice?

Research priority: research that can continuously

interact with the dynamics of community and

stakeholder values around water. Development and

application of tools and processes that allows multiple

values to inform the framing of water issues, and to

draw on these as an integral part of decision-making

processes.

4. Multi-level institutional governance

Australia has an extremely complex institutional

framework around water, with numerous institutions,

laws and plans, often with overlapping roles and

responsibilities. The complexity is compounded by the

hierarchical structure of local, state and federal

responsibilities and laws. This framework has led to

ineffective multi-institutional relations characterised by

power imbalances and conflicts. Widespread policy

failure and implementation deficit reflects the lack of

coherence between policy settings and regional needs

and capacity. Much greater research attention is

needed on effective multi-level institutional

governance which fosters communication,

coordination and cooperation between agencies.

Further analysis of the jurisdictional responsibilities,

capacities and conflicts regarding institutional water

management is required. This will involve attention to

the development of non-adversarial institutional

frameworks with improved capacity in problem solvingand adaptive management. In particular, there is a

need for research into enabling and empowering

regional and local agencies in water governance and

on-ground implementation. Some important research

questions are:

What is the most effective way to be framingthe issues to encourage practicalimplementation?

How can collaborative multi-level governancein relation to goal setting foster more

successful implementation?

What is effective management at a regionalscale?

What is good institutional design?

How can we better facilitate autonomousstructural adjustment to enable communitiesto change and flourish?

Research Priority: understand key capacity needs for

multi-level institutional water governance at federal,

state and local levels, identifying the conditions

needed to improve cooperation and coordination, and

to overcome barriers to implementation of policy into

practice.

5. Environmental water governance

There are a number of important research needs in

relation to the governance of environmental flows.

Participants expressed concern that in a market-

based system, there is a risk that rules based (higher

security) flows can be replaced with tradeable

entitlements. Water governance research shouldexplore how co-management and collaboration,

together with robust planning frameworks, can

improve the effectiveness of environmental flows for

both human and ecological needs. This involves

understanding community values and expectations of

environmental water, preferably through case studies

where water allocations have generated social

consensus. There is also the need for more research

into the measurement of both the ecological and

social benefits of those allocations. Additionally,

participants emphasised the need for improved

systems for reporting access entitlement flows with

transparent reporting of all access and extraction.

Research Priority: improved understanding of

community expectations of environmental water.

Exploration of the ways to achieve social consensus

and effective co-management of environmental flows.

6. Comparative and case-oriented research

Methodologically, there is a call for more comparative

and case-oriented water governance research. There

is interest in more focused exploration of lessons frompast and present experiences from within Australia

and Internationally. Participants suggested that

comparative and case-oriented research would be

appropriate in the areas of: institutional design and

performance; implementation of policy into practice;

conditions for effective collaboration between

agencies and regions; incentives and enforcement

mechanisms; and negotiation and implementation of

water agreements and water plans.

Research Priority: fund comparative and case-

oriented water governance research to utilise the

experiences of the past and present, both within

Australia and internationally.

7. Water governance in whole-of-system

sustainability

Integrative whole-of-system research is required that

addresses complexity and uncertainty underlying

water issues, especially in the context of climate

change. Water governance must be informed by

research that looks holistically at the biophysical

landscape (e.g. the interaction of ground and surface

waters, soil condition, biodiversity) along with social,

economic and cultural systems. Integration of water

3


12/26


13/26


Perspectives on Water Governance ResearchIntroduction

This water briefing paper introduces some of the

outcomes of a workshop for early-career researchers

(ECRs), held in Melbourne during April 2011. The

workshop program was designed to explore

governance research from a range of disciplinary

perspectives, grounded in participants' own research.

We aimed to show the contribution of broad

disciplinary traditions to water governance research,

to examine how these can be situated intrans-disciplinary research, and create

epistemological awareness.

The workshop began with an intellectually stimulating

role play of research as praxis, led by Professor Ray

Ison. This evoked a four-stage journey from birth to

research and the choices available along the way.

The following figure illustrates the four stages of the

journey.

The first of the four stages examined the

circumstances surrounding a newborn person

entering a world with established traditions, practices

and understandings.

At the second stage was a conceptual learner a

child who is learning about the world through formal

education and their own experiences.

Arriving at the third stage was a person who identifies

as a researcher and participants examined how

traditions of understanding and life experiences shape

a researcher's frame. It was recognised that multiple

research traditions exist (e.g. legal, social, ecological),

with their own language, concepts and practices. The

experience of training in these traditions leads to a

particular set of theories in use, methods, and

interpretations of reality defined as first-order

research.

Moving from the third stage to the fourth stage

involved a shift from first-order research to

second-order research as praxis, which involvesexplicit choices about research methodology,

theoretical frameworks, situation framing and whether

to be situated within or outside of a situation.

Perspectives on trans-disciplinary

research

Dr Chris Riedy, from the Institute for Sustainable

Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney, gave

a presentation on why we need trans-disciplinary

research and how to do it. Framing water governance

as a wicked problem lends itself to non-disciplinary

choices. The distinction between different types of

disciplinarity in research was made, summarised in

the table below.

Table: Types of disciplinarity in research

Type Features

Disciplinarity Specialisation in isolation

Multidisciplinarity No cooperation

Pluridisciplinarity Cooperation without coordination

Interdisciplinarity Coordination from a higher level concept

Transdisciplinarity Between, across and beyond disciplinarity

Dr Riedy introduced trans-disciplinary research as

transcending the boundaries of traditional research

disciplines, both epistemological and fact/value

(Carew and Wickson 2010). To some degree this

analysis also implies that the boundaries between

different ways of creating knowledge are artificial.

A set of criteria for quality trans-disciplinary research

was given, based on Mitchell and Willetts (2009).

These included: (1) original and creative contribution

to knowledge and/or practice; (2) critically aware and

coherent argument; (3) Critical, pluralistic engagement

with appropriate literature, artefacts, the research

1

Theories

Methodologies

Traditions

Theories

Methodologies

Situations


14/26


context and multiple stakeholder perspectives within

it; (4) evidence of critical reflection/reflexivity on own

work; (5) alignment between epistemology, theory,

methodology, claims and enquiry space; (6) mastery

of process and/or outcomes; and (7) effective

communication for diverse audiences.

A distinction between a system-determined problem

and aproblem-determined system captured the

essence of the differences between disciplinary and

trans-disciplinary research respectively. However, this

was not to say that one mode of research is better

than another. Rather, each of the modes listed in the

table are appropriate in different contexts and that

trans-disciplinarity could be used in scoping,

contextualising and disseminating disciplinary

outcomes.

Environmental economics research

Dr Caroline Sullivan, from the School ofEnvironmental Science and Management, Southern

Cross University, presented her perspective on water

governance, climate adaptation and economics. A

defining image from her presentation was that

nowhere on Earth can you find an economy this

being a system of exchange between humans for

factors of production that originate in the environment.

As Earth is a finite system, these factors of production

are limited and scarce. In this context, economics is

the study of how humans allocate scarce resources to

meet their needs and wants.Dr Sullivan contrasted the lack of ethical concerns in

mainstream neoclassical economics with the need for

ethics to underpin human decisions if we are to have

a sustainable future. The differences between

neoclassical (environmental) economics and

ecological economics were further highlighted as

follows.

Environmental Economics is the neoclassical

approach to including the environment in economic

systems: the economy is the core system. Key

elements include: everything driven by the marketmechanism; market assumed to be efficient, and

efficiency is the main objective; maximising profit and

market share are key objectives of producers; welfare

is assumed to be gained through ever increasing

economic growth; no attempt is made to link what can

be achieved with what is ecologically possible;

non-marketed resources tend to be ignored; the finite

characteristics of natural resources are not

considered; models are based on economic principles

combined with statistics (econometrics).

Ecological Economics is a more recent approach toeconomics which recognises that the environment is

the core system supporting an economy. Key

elements include: Earth is seen as a whole system;

markets have a limited role; ethics and equity are

more important than efficiency; precautionary principle

is important as we are faced with uncertainty in

environmental interactions; production needs to be

linked to what is ecologically possible; unpriced

resources need to be considered as much as priced

ones; everything is ultimately generated from energy

from the sun; models must be multidisciplinary andsystems based.

Australias natural resources

management

Mr. Jason Alexandra, from the Murray Darling Basin

Authority, examined Australian NRM through the

evolution of ideas, culture, values and practices that

have been influential since European colonisation. He

spoke of some of the ecological and cultural

consequences of these approaches and argued for a

rethinking of landscape policy, governance andmanagement which embraces innovation of ideas and

production systems, adaptive capacity, diversity and

shared learning.

He described landscapes as complex co-evolved

systems based on long-term complex negotiations

between culture and nature. Culture and landscapes

influence each other and people are constantly

making the landscapes of the future in the vision of

their ideal. Historically, the vision of Australia as a

coloniser country was of landscapes that can be

transformed to productive agriculture, and Australiasculture, economy and agricultural practices were

based on this vision of control over nature.

We now seek alternative visions of our landscapes

and the realities of their Australianness i.e. the

vulnerability of ecosystems, predilection to drought,

flood and fire. That is, biodiversity challenges and

ecosystems in need of care, not exploitation. Over the

last twenty years in particular, culture, stories, values

and visions have started to change. Additionally, the

climatic conditions have changed creating greater

complexity and undermining the notion of stationarity we can not reliably predict and plan for future

climatic events based on past events. There is

increasing uncertainty. Therefore, he argued for the

need to invest in new approaches to managing natural

resources through developing scientific capacity and

researching key questions about dynamic non-steady

state systems - e.g. critical questions about thresholds

and tipping points. In particular, there is a value in

re-thinking Australias landscapes as a conservation

and cultural economy, building on new approaches,

multi-culturalism, multi-functionality and theredefinition of indicators and progress. Further

reading: Alexandra and Riddington (2007).

2


15/26


Where does law and regulation fit in?

Professor Lee Godden, from the Melbourne Law

School, The University of Melbourne, took workshop

participants through a five year law degree in 90

minutes. Professor Godden explored the different

ways that law is defined and conceptualised, placing

these on a scale from law as norm to law as authority.

The first, which is the favoured position of natural law

theorists, sees a connection between law and a

natural moral order, with a deity or community norms

as the top of the moral order. The second, also called

positive law (or positivism), takes authority from

human structures, such as elected parliaments.

Participants engaged in group discussion on how law

applies to their work in water governance, and were

asked to consider whether it is through (i) law as

rules, (ii) law as norms, (iii) law as accepted practice,

(iv) law as authorised exercise of power, or (v)

behaviour change (and whether that is law).

Professor Godden introduced a distinction between

formal law and governance, the latter being the

administrative and bureaucratic process that is not

law, but may institutionalise law.

On regulation, the shift towards collaborative

governance and economic rationalism are placing less

emphasis on a centralised role of the state in

governing environmental issues - also understood as

governing at a distance (Godden and Peel 2010).

Participants were brought to understand that in the

water sector, regulation is expressed through a

spectrum of regulatory models, including

market-mechanisms, corporatisation, benchmarking,

and hybrid models of self-regulation and government

audit.

Towards the end of this workshop session Ms Jude

Wallace, also from The University of Melbourne,

added her thoughts on new forms of blended

regulatory models, based on a catchment-based

research project in Victoria.

Water governance and socialdisadvantage

Dr Fiona Miller, from The University of Melbourne,

presented on water governance and social

disadvantage, with particular emphasis on issues of

equity and social vulnerability. She sees water

governance as the arena where struggles over the

meaning, control and use of water can be negotiated

and potentially resolved. There are generic concepts

of good governance, such as equity, effectiveness,

sustainability, integration, stakeholder involvement.

However, governance should, importantly, be context-specific and informed by particular ecological, political,

social, cultural needs. Developed in a context specific

way, there is more likely to be recognition of diversity

and the assumptions and dominance of certain values

and knowledges.

Governance can greatly determine the extent of equity

in water distribution. Water equity concerns how much

water people have access to for basic needs or

livelihoods, and the ease and security of that access.

The issue of access to safe and reliable water and

sanitation continues to be a major global health issue,

which impacts disproportionately on the worlds poor

and women.

A rise in influence of market mechanisms, private

sector participation and privatisation in the water

sector has raised concerns regarding the potential

retreat of public institutions. There needs to be a more

nuanced appreciation of the role of power in water

matters. Users of water with little political power,

including the environment have the potential to be

negatively impacted upon.

There are a range of ways that individuals, groups

(communities, sectors, regions) or ecosystems can be

vulnerable in relation to water, although there are

often multiple stresses operating simultaneously. Dr

Miller described the ways in which society can be

vulnerable, including to: environmental risks and

hazards (pollution, floods, water scarcity, storms, sea

surges); economic risks (changes in market relations

and access, removal of subsidies or tariffs, price

fluctuations); and social risks (conflict, disease,

political upheavals, unemployment, discrimination).

Vulnerability can be reduced through the governance

choices we make in terms of institutional

arrangements, the distribution of costs and benefits

and through developing coping strategies and

resilience.

She questioned how well we are currently prepared to

cope with climate change in terms of the variability

and increased competition over the resource.She

identified an important missing link between studies

on the impacts of climate change on water, and how

associated society-water relations influence social

vulnerability.

Water governance and philosophy

Associate Professor Adrian Walsh, University of New

England, began his presentation on philosophy by

asking participants to consider questions about their

own research in terms of methodological and

normative problems and assumptions. He asked how

ECRs would approach a non-empirical problem in

their research. From this point the discussion turned

to how philosophy, which has been largely absent in

many water governance debates, has a role to play inquestions of water distribution decisions, particularly

as they relate to distributive justice and equity. The

issue of justice arises as a natural consequence of

3


16/26


scarcity, where humans have to make decisions about

how those resources are distributed. These debates,

and claims of fairness (and unfairness) in allocation,

are not issues that can be solved, but a process

which society must continually make decisions about;

however, they often only emerge in times of crisis.

Markets are one procedural mechanism that may

bypass questions of normativity and assumptions

because they are not directly governed by issues of

value or justice. However there are underlying values

in the justification for markets (e.g. utilitarianism) and

other rules in place to guide the use of markets, such

as sustainable diversion limits.

The next part of the presentation turned to the

question of virtue, and how different systems of water

distribution either assume that society is virtue rich or

virtue parsimonious. For example, a stewardship

system assumes that there is a good supply of virtue

amongst users, whereas a market mechanism

facilitates distribution where there is little assumed

virtue, hence it relies on individual self-interest.

Associate Professor Walsh offered three reasons why

water, as a distributive good, has not been a subject

of explicit philosophical theories. First, water is a good

that is utilised in a number of different ways, some not

obvious (e.g. interception activities); second, the issue

of natural injustice and social injustice can be

somewhat blurred in relation to water and; third it is a

good that can easily change from a benefit to a

burden.

A systems research perspective

Across two presentations, Professor Ray Ison

introduced different ways of framing water governance

research and his perspective on systems research.

Framing is a key governance issue because of its

influence on initial starting conditions and pathway

dependencies. Failure to frame appropriately limits

choices and thus innovation. Some key framings for

water governance research were introduced. Firstly,

the distinction of naming water governing situations aswicked problems opens up conversation about

charting a course through the situation, rather than

trying to reach an end-point or solution. Systemic

and adaptive governance, based on the cybernetic

concept of responding to feedback, was considered

as a key framing of adaptation in wicked situations.

Other important framings were water sensitive cities,

agro-ecosystems or socio-ecological systems.

The word system was described as bringing forth a

duality of both systemic and systematic elements.

What is commonly understood as systems thinkingwas instead introduced as a historical set ofsystems

approaches situated on a scale of systems as

epistemologies, or ways of knowing, to systems as

ontologies, or seeing systems as real-world entities.

These different approaches have implications for

framing water governance research as either

situations (e.g. soft approaches, usually seen in the

social sciences) or as real-world systems (e.g. hard

approaches, commonly seen in ecology or

engineering).

On the topic of systems practice, Professor Ison

talked about five constraining settings characterising

water governance: (1) the pervasive target mentality,

(2) living in a projectified world, (3) failure to

appropriately frame situations, (4) an apartheid of the

emotions, and (5) institutional complexity. Closing his

presentation, Professor Ison put forward the idea of

an ethics of practice - fostering the circumstances for

epistemological awareness and researcher

responsibility.

SummaryRevisiting the idea ofresearch as praxis described at

the start of this paper, early career researchers in

water governance often arrive at research, through a

variety of disciplinary traditions, in a first-order

manner. To move from first-order to the more

epistemologically-aware second-order research is a

choice to be informed by and explicitly wield

theoretical and methodological frameworks, from

disciplinary or cross-disciplinary traditions, and to

engage in research situations. Researching in this

way opens up a wealth of new understandings andpractices, and has the potential to foster a

generational transformation in water governance

research and practice.

Further Information

Naomi Rubenstein, Philip Wallis*, Ray IsonMonash Sustainability InstituteMonash University,[email protected]

Lee GoddenMelbourne Law SchoolThe University of Melbourne

References

Alexandra, J. and Riddington, C. (2007) 'Redreaming the rural

landscape', Futures, 39: 324-339.

Carew, A.L. and Wickson, F. (2010) The TD Wheel: A heuristic to

shape, support and evaluate transdisciplinary research,

Futures, 42: 1146-1155.

Godden, L. and Peel J. (2010) Environmental Law: Scientific, Pol icy

And Regulatory Dimensions.Oxford University Press,

Melbourne.

Mitchell, C. and Willetts, J. (2009). Quality criteria for inter- and

trans-disciplinary doctoral research outcomes. University of

Technology, Sydney.Nicolescu, B. (2002). Manifesto of transdisciplinarity. SUNY Press.


4


17/26


Water Governance Research for TransformationWater Governance and Water Reform

This paper argues that there is a need for an ongoing

and dedicated strategy to support further research on

water governance in Australia. It is the fourth in a

series of water governance policy briefs developed by

the Water Governance Research Initiative, which was

funded by the National Climate Change Adaptation

Research Facility (NCCARF). The policy briefs have

drawn on the collective input of a network of over 350

researchers and their participation in a series ofworkshops run from 2009-2011.

This Briefing Paper sets out ideas for new directions

for both water governance and water governance

research in Australia. In framing this paper a

distinction is made between reform doing what is

already being done more efficiently, and

transformation - rigorously scrutinising what is being

done in terms of effectiveness, efficacy and equity to

put forward appropriate platforms to initiate change.

It is clear that there are numerous and acute

challenges at hand to sustainably manage Australiaswater resources. Moreover, many of these challenges

are intensified as Australia is at once highly urbanised

along its coastal fringes but also heavily dependent on

rural and resource industries.

Possibly the most fundamental issue for our water

resources is achieving sustainable levels of extraction

(including groundwater) that support the competing

demands of growing urban populations, supporting

rural communities and industries, the development

and expansion of new and existing industries while

also meeting critical ecological objectives.

The complexity of these demands has meant that

despite almost 20 years of water reform in Australia,

as the National Water Commissions Third Biennial

Assessment has noted, many water resources are

still not being managed sustainably (NWC, 2011,6).

Many ecosystems and constituent communities are

experiencing ongoing stress and decline from severe

restrictions in river inflows or struggling to recover

from severe flooding after long periods of drought.

Although extraction levels are core to water

managing, many social, cultural and biophysical

aspects are in need of urgent research and policy

attention, including: water quality, the interaction

between ground and surface water, transitioning to

water sensitive cities, an examination of social equity

and distributional justice dimensions of water

management, as well as exploration of system

dynamics and resilience, landscape and

environmental values, water accounting and

monitoring and conservation of freshwater

ecosystems (Alexandra and Riddington, 2007; Miller

et al., 2010; Ross and Martinez-Santos, 2010).

The NWCs Third Biennial Assessment of the NWI

highlighted 12 key themes for areas of improvement.Among these are a renewed commitment to the water

reform process, with a strengthening of community

involvement in water planning and management,

improved coordination between water and natural

resource management and a more effective approach

to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Transforming Water Governance

A rethinking of governance is needed to address

complex water challenges in ways that do not try to

tame problems into conventional management

systems. In the transformation of governance there is

a need to better articulate standards or principles of

good water governance. These may include, for

example: having clear objectives; transparent

processes for acknowledging scientific findings and

stakeholder/community interests; linkages with other

related policy domains; and accountability for results.

Institutional change must occur through processes of

innovation that take place at multiple levels and

through various pathways. Those responsible for

developing, or maintaining water governance

institutions need to find new ways of thinking about

and working with complexity which allow for trial and

error and experimentation; and for ongoing feedback,

monitoring and evaluation of how such processes are

performing to facilitate possible adjustment.

Systems thinking, together with the use of

collaborative and deliberative processes, has a

central role to play in this process. Currently, there is

little attention paid to new methods of governance in

Australia, and the sets of skills needed to undertake

these processes are poorly understood and

underutilised (Ison et al., 2011). This Briefing Paper

thus sets out new paradigms for practice.

1


18/26


Rethinking Water Governance: new

paradigms for practice

Framing

A useful starting point for opening discussion about

the transformation of water governance is to consider

how particular situations, issues or notions around

governance themselves are framed. Framing has acritical influence on the starting conditions for any

policy, project or decision-making process, and the

manner in which an issue is framed can widen or

constrain the consideration of alternatives.

However, a common failure of governance is a lack of

self-reflection or deliberation into understanding how

an existing situation came into effect. The failure to

adequately consider framing is one factor contributing

to the maintenance of conventional paradigms in

many situations that leads to continuation of

hard-path, inflexible and engineered waterinvestment decisions that focus on policies aimed at

regulatory and efficiency outputs (Brown et al., 2011).

These decisions and policy platforms have a

continued cognitive and normative influence within

many organisations and institutions that limit the

possibility for innovation and change. In an era of

climate change the framing of water managing

situations becomes critical due to increased pressure

on natural and social systems and the unreliability of

previous assumptions about water availability.

Integrated Governance

An integrated approach to water governance is a key

theme in the literature which is used to describe

attempts to coordinate and establish links in

organisational, institutional, and policy areas, as well

as considering the interlinking social, economic and

biophysical systems that interact with water.

The objective of integration reflects the wicked

nature of water challenges, that is, situations

characterised by uncertainty, complexity and multiple

perspectives that are multi-causal and are

interconnected with other issues (Head 2008). The

establishment of Integrated Catchment Management

(ICM) and Integrated Natural Resource Management

have been important conceptual and managerial

innovations in the water governance domain.

These concepts remain valuable, but to date there

has been ad hoc incorporation of these principles into

effective governance arrangements, notwithstanding

the major contribution of entities, such as Catchment

Management Authorities. In practice, the current

situation in Australia is still a long way from effectively

integrated water governance on a number of fronts.

Because water issues run across jurisdictional

boundaries an important area of water reform that

needs urgent attention is that of multi-level and

multi-institutional governance (Daniell et al., 2010). To

a large extent the complex institutional framework

around water, which is plagued by ambiguous roles

and responsibilities, conflicts and power struggles, is

a consequence of the historical development of the

sector and the difficulties of water resource

management in a federal system.

Until relatively recently, the states largely developed

their water management and entitlement systems

autonomously with little interaction with what was

occurring in neighbouring jurisdictions and

irrespective of the various hydrological and ecological

conditions (Connell, 2011).

Although the NWI water reform process that

culminated in the Water Act 2007 has attempted to

create a more cohesive governance structure across

Australian jurisdictions, it is argued that there remains

a need for a more robust, yet responsive legal

framework to effectively implement the ongoing

reforms and to increase accountability, compliance

and monitoring (Pittock et al., 2010).

International environmental law provides principles in

key International instruments to sustainably govern

water (e.g. Convention on Biological Diversity). These

principles, reflected in the Water Act 2007, offer a

framework for a conversation around how best to

govern water in a federal jurisdiction; whilst

recognising state needs and the important role of local

and regional governance institutions, such as

catchment management authorities. Decision-making

around water in a federal jurisdiction is always likely to

be highly contested but a robust federal legal

structure that reflects core guiding principles for

decision-making across and between jurisdictions is

an important touchstone.

Further, to improve multi-level governance there is a

need to address the capacity of regional and local

agencies in on-ground implementation of water

managing particularly where funding constraints are

likely to become more acute in the near future. More

widely, a coherent examination of the extent to whichvarious regulatory instruments and institutional

models have particular systemic implications for water

requires examination. In particular, how do decisions

in respect of water interact with other cognate natural

resource management contexts.

Policy integration is another area under the theme of

integration that is attracting increasing attention,

particularly in the areas of water, climate change and

energy. There is currently no national policy platform

that directly links the decision-making in these sectors

even though they have a range of criticalinter-dependencies (Pittock, 2011; NWC, 2011).

These interdependencies are revealed where a

number of policies for climate change mitigation and

2


19/26


adaptation in the energy and water sectors may also

create negative consequences for the intersecting

areas. Such inadvertent consequences can be

classed as maladaptive (Barnett and ONeill, 2009).

There needs to be a more comprehensive system of

laws and rules for water use that includes overland

forestry, mining, stock and domestic use, farm dams

and aquifer storage and recovery.

Water governance institutions and practice

Key questions for refreshing reform machinery

(NWC, 2011, 16) from a governance perspective can

be drawn from the research outcomes and activities of

network members. These diverse challenges will

require us to reflect on how we can move towards

governance institutions that can challenge status quo

thinking, and which embrace complexity and

uncertainty yet still integrate and communicate across

multiple sectors and industries.

How can we set up devolved management that also

works at a broad scale? The institutional conflicts that

have, at times, characterised the water reform

process highlight the critical need for multilevel and

flexible governance arrangements that are responsive

in real time frames and which are not tied to relic

biophysical and social patterns (Bellamy, 2002; Head,

2008). Achieving innovative institutional design

requires a variety of modes of contextually situated

processes of individual, social and organisational

engagement, learning and cultural change.

Trust between agencies and local people require

positive and imaginative approaches from all sides

through multi-layer planning, forums, processes and

modes of engagement. As a priority, research and

education is needed on: a) best practice flexible

governance for NRM planning, especially how to

involve local people and b) how to build good

relationships between agencies and stakeholders,

specifically how to develop people skilled in the art of

leadership and facilitation. The concept of language

barriers needs to be extended to "within English",

situations where cultural and historical differences canproduce a language/conceptual barrier. Knowledge

brokers and mediation can be instrumental for helping

to negotiate collaborative processes.

In this vein, social learning offers a complementary

governance mechanism to more traditional regulation,

fiscal measures and information provision and a

process of systemic change and transformation

undergone by stakeholders in complex situations

(Ison et al., 2011). Collins and Ison (2009) describe

social learning as:

The convergence of goals, criteria and knowledge

leading to the awareness of mutual expectations

and the building of relational capital amongst

stakeholders (a dynamic form of capital that

integrates the other forms, i.e. artificial, natural,

social and human);

The process of co-creation of knowledge, which

provides insight into the means required to

transform a situation; and

The change of behaviours and actions resulting

from understanding something through action

(knowing).

Investment in social learning, and other alternative

and /or complementary governance mechanisms (see

e.g. Dovers, 2010), offers a potential means for

developing adaptive institutions with more coherent

community engagement in water governance.

Given the acknowledged limitations of conventional

management paradigms, the challenge is to

successfully demonstrate the capacity of social

learning to initiate governance reforms (Allan and

Wilson, 2009). There is much to be learned about the

dynamics of communities and learning processes so it

is imperative to persevere with experimentation into

the processes of social learning through greater

investment in comparative and case-oriented

research. This will require leadership from those

charged with maturing the water reform agenda

(NWC, 2007, 7) in concert with a collaborative and

multidisciplinary research community.

Securing a research future

Water governance research is a diverse field and it is

approached from many disciplinary perspectives, with

different traditions, methodologies and frameworks.

The network of researchers that have participated in

this Initiative at times have expressed frustration at

the difficulties in communication that are both created

by, and perpetuate, the disciplinary divide. One of the

objectives of the community of conversation is to open

the way for cross-disciplinary communication,

reflective awareness, mutual learning and

understanding in order to reduce the sense of

disciplinary impasse.

Although many water governance researchers haveexperimented with and engaged in different types of

cross-disciplinary research in Australia, they have

reported many institutional, intellectual and cultural

barriers. Funding and support for cross-disciplinary

research, although often touted as a priority is not

readily available or adequately supported in practice.

Moving to second order research as praxis involves

explicit choices about research methodology,

theoretical frameworks, situation framing and whether

to be situated within or outside of a situation (Mitchell,

2009; Ison et al. 2011). To effectively engage in thisresearch translation is time consuming and often it

does not attract the scholarly rewards that attach to

more discrete disciplinary endeavours.

3


20/26


Researchers at the early stages of their career may

be well placed intellectually to start to engage with

cross-disciplinary approaches because they may not

be as embedded in a particular disciplinary tradition.

However, reports from early career researchers

(ECRs) that have participated in the Initiative have

shown that they still face many institutional barriers

and lack opportunities to engage with a wide-range ofresearchers and perspectives. More support is

needed for ECRs in moving to second-order research

as a way to open up new understandings and to foster

generational transformation in water governance

research and practice.

Another key objective of the Water Governance

Research Initiative is to help bridge the gap between

research, policy and practice. The series of

workshops that have been run through the initiative

has been one strategy to bring together people with

various backgrounds and interests for discussion.

Members of the Water Governance Research

Initiative network have suggested that there needs to

be better understanding about the strategy behind

research, including why it is important, what the

product and audience is and how it can be brought

together for effective delivery. Some recommended

actions for furthering links between researchers,

policy and practice include:

Sponsoring internships in government for

researchers and post graduates

Sponsoring foreign research for policy lessons

Linking up with professional organisations to

understand and develop knowledge brokering

Developing standards for data and research

storage, with better public access to information

Conventional paradigms continue to dominate the

water governance landscape, leading to practices in

research, policy and implementation that are limited in

their capacity to tackle the dimensions of the water

governance reform agenda that has been scoped out

in the NWC's Third Biennial Assessment Report. On

the other hand, the initiative has also shown that there

is a research and policy community in Australia that is

vitally interested in engaging together in a community

of conversation and active participation to experiment

with cross-disciplinary research programs that can

provide a workable platform for addressing emergent

water governance concerns. Indeed, there will remain

a need for continued support for collaborative

endeavours which can promote innovative thinking,

experimentation and mutual learning in re-thinking

water governance in Australia.

References

Alexandra, J., Riddington, C., 2007. Redreaming the rural

landscape. Futures 39, 324339.

All

The Water Governance Research Initiative

Documents

Transcript of The Water Governance Research Initiative