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International River Symposium
Two researchers from the Collaborative Water Planning Project are presenting the key findings on risk and community participation for water planning at this week’s 11th International Riversymposium – an event held as part of Brisbane’s Riverfestival.
More Seats, More Tables: Methods for enhancing public participation in water planning & management
John Mackenzie
The proliferation of tools, tool-kits and tool-boxes for community participation presents a series of dilemmas for contemporary water management practioners looking to engage the community in water management. How are we to decide which approach is right for different circumstances, different planning needs and with different sectors of the community? This presentation explores the development of a fit-for-purpose framework for community participation, which attempts to outline how to select from the range of engagement approaches available based on needs assessment and adaptive management methodologies.
The Risk in Water Planning
Claudia Baldwin & Mark Hampstead
Water planning is a key means of achieving the objectives of Australia’s National Water Initiative and one of the most important tools for achieving sustainable use of water. It is also a critical vehicle for consideration of climate variability and climate change in planning and managing for future use and environmental protection. This paper draws from our review of water allocation planning in Australia, undertaken for National Water Commission in the latter half of 2007. The review gathered information from documents, planners and stakeholders to identify best practices and lessons learned. Eleven case studies from States and the Northern Territory were used to illustrate the strengths and challenges of planning processes in delivering desired outcomes. The focus in this paper is on how governments in Australia have addressed climate variability and climate change in water planning to date. We review current approaches to managing climate risks and suggest a range of options for responding to this challenge within the water planning framework. In doing so, we explore risk assessment, future scenario development, contingency planning and adaptive management and highlight the role for transparency, public involvement, and assessment of possible impacts through this process.
About The International RiverSymposium
The International Riversymposium is part of Riverfestival – Brisbane’s community and environmental festival celebrating our waterways and culture by focusing on the city’s signature natural landmark, the Brisbane River. The festival is 10 days of a diverse program at the start of spring with music, visual arts, film, forums, education projects, dining, culture, large-scale free outdoor events and recreation.
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Water Governance: Legal and Policy Analysis
Volume Three
Water planning: a legal and policy analysis
This volume introduces and analyses the legal and policy framework within which collaborative water planning exists. This volume starts at the Commonwealth level looking at the Constitution and its role in water planning, as well as more recent policy and legislative aspects including the National Water Initiative; Native Title and Cultural Heritage legislation; water security planning and the Commonwealth Water Act (2007); legislative requirements at a State level; and generic features of water legislation. A description and analysis of the water planning legal framework state by state is also included. This state-by-state analysis emphasises aspects germane to collaborative water planning referred to in earlier volumes, including public participation, socio-economic values, Indigenous participation, tools for tradeoffs and monitoring and evaluation of the water planning process.
Water Planning Literature Review
Volume One
Collaborative Water Planning, Context and Practice: A Literature Review
Download the Collaborative Water Planning Literature Review (PDF, 1.61MB)
- chronicles the history of water management in Australia, highlighting water policy and Council of Australian Governments (CoAG) reform in this area. It also outlines the biophysical characteristics of northern Australian rivers and catchments, their human history, current land and water use, and development pressures to which they are subject. The discussion locates water planning within the broader field of collaborative natural resource management (NRM), and introduces concepts germane to this topic including collaboration, power, citizen participation, social capital and social learning. The place of and limits to collaborative NRM are also discussed.
- examines citizen participation in water planning processes from both international and Australian perspectives, particularly in light of current Australian water reform and the National Water Initiative. Various paradigms in water planning ranging from ad hoc, opportunistic planning; the development of large-scale, state-funded infrastructure development, through to the use of economic instruments and socio-economic assessments, nationally consistent entitlements, inclusion of environmental flow objectives and enhanced public participation are also summarised. The notion of a spectrum of increasing citizen participation is also discussed, as are the tensions evident in the National Water Initiative between regulatory, market-based and participatory planning paradigms.
- discusses the treatment of values in NRM and water planning. It addresses the different meanings of value, sociological theories of value and methods of valuation, particularly the way decision makers recognise and understand values of various participants in water planning.
- focuses on issues of Indigenous participation in water planning in Australia. The Australian Government National Water Initiative aims to address Indigenous interests in water through water planning processes. Several issues are identified including negotiating between the very different ways Indigenous and non-Indigenous people know, value and talk about water; differences in social, geographical and temporal scales; appropriate representation and structures for Indigenous participation in water planning; the need for adequate resourcing to allow effective Indigenous participation; and the need to redress power imbalances that disadvantage Indigenous people in decision making. The lack of any systematic studies of the outcomes of Indigenous involvement in water resource planning in Australia and the need to develop ways to address the issues identified above are emphasised.
- explains a range of tools that may be used to reveal trade-offs – situations that involve decisions where each choice that may be made has both advantages and disadvantages. Tools discussed include multi-criteria evaluation; the citizens’ jury; deliberative multi-criteria evaluation; consensus conferencing; deliberative polls; and focus groups.
- ‘problematises’ the notion of collaboration in water and natural resource planning and management, arguing that there is limited empirical evidence of the benefits of such an approach and an absence of an established framework from which to analyse and assess such evidence. A range of criteria, derived from the literature are presented as the basis for a monitoring and evaluation framework to assess collaboration in water resource planning.
Download the Collaborative Water Planning Literature Review (PDF, 1.61MB)
