Water governance, the rule of law and regulating risks to the Murray–Darling Basin

ABSTRACT

In Australia’s Murray – Darling Basin (MDB), the law explicitly requires strategies for managing risks to water quality and quantity. In this paper, we analyse water governance in the Basin, identifying inadequate governance standards and practices. Current arrangements in the MDB demonstrate deficiencies and vulnerabilities that limit capabilities for dealing with known or emerging risks and erode the legitimacy of governing institutions. Our analysis of the problems and opportunities for reform is informed by the OECD’s principles of good water governance and the legal concept of the rule of law. We conclude that ignoring opportunities to adopt better-practice water governance is a severe risk to the MDB’s shared waters. To overcome reactionary crisis-reaction reform, we propose reforms that empower critical evaluations of governance structures, rules, practices and participation. Therefore, proposed reforms of policy, institutions and legislation do not simply attempt one-off changes to enhance transparency and accountability but instead seek to enshrine processes of continuous, ongoing improvements to water governance.

KEYWORDS:

• Water governance
• planned environmental water (PEW)
• transparency
• legitimacy
• water law reform
• compliance
• enforcement
• Murray–Darling Basin
• the rule of law
• Water Governance Act

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kate Chipperfield

Kate Chipperfield is formerly of the Environmental Defenders Office Freshwater team and is currently a practising corporate lawyer based in Brisbane. Kate also holds an economics degree from the University of Queensland.

Jason Alexandra

Jason Alexandra has diverse research and policy experience including as a Senior Executive at the Murray Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) and the MDBA during the development of the first Basin Plan, where he was responsible for risk assessment and climate research. Jason’s PhD research examined the evolution of climate adaptation policy in the MDB. Jason works at the Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions at the Australian National University researching water governance and climate adaptation.