Decision Making in Multi-jurisdictional River Basins

Abstract

In the Murray-Darling basin in Australia, a management framework has been adopted to permit the different states that control this basin to manage it cooperatively. This framework consists of joint bodies at both the political and technical level. Similar frameworks have been adopted in other multi-jurisdictional river basins, such as the Mekong in southeast Asia. Analysis of a number of case study decisions in the Murray-Darling Basin Initiative reveals a variety of bases upon which decisions may be made, with the process being led by those from both higher up and lower down the decision making hierarchy and that a semi-rational process is generally followed. By establishing a political body to title the co-operative framework, some sort of balance between political and technical considerations is achieved in an environment, which otherwise would risk being dominated by the individual political concerns of the different jurisdictions.

Keywords:

• Multi-jurisdictional river basin management
• Murray-Darling
• decision making