Water Governance Research Initiative
Briefing Paper No. 4
Water Governance Research for Transformation
Water Governance and Water Reform
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).
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 of
workshops run from 2009-2011.
The NWC’s 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.
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.
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.
It is clear that there are numerous and acute
challenges at hand to sustainably manage Australia’s
water 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.
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.
The complexity of these demands has meant that
despite almost 20 years of water reform in Australia,
as the National Water Commission’s 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.
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.
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
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Briefing Paper No. 4
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.
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 a
critical 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.
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).
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 water
investment decisions that focus on policies aimed at
regulatory and efficiency outputs (Brown et al., 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).
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.
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.
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.
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 which
various 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.
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.
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 critical
inter-dependencies (Pittock, 2011; NWC, 2011).
Because water issues run across jurisdictional
boundaries an important area of water reform that
needs urgent attention is that of multi-level and
These interdependencies are revealed where a
number of policies for climate change mitigation and
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Briefing Paper No. 4
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 O’Neill, 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.
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Water governance institutions and practice
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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 can
produce a language/conceptual barrier. Knowledge
brokers and mediation can be instrumental for helping
to negotiate collaborative processes.
Although many water governance researchers have
experimented 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.
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:

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’).
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 this
research ‘translation’ is time consuming and often it
does not attract the scholarly ‘rewards’ that attach to
more discrete disciplinary endeavours.
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
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Briefing Paper No. 4
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 of
researchers 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.
References
Alexandra, J., Riddington, C., 2007. Redreaming the rural
landscape. Futures 39, 324–339.
Allan, C., Wilson, B.P., 2009. Meeting in the middle – desirable but
not easy. Environmental Policy and Governance 19, 388–399.
Barnett, J., O’Neill, S., 2010. Maladaptation. Global Environ
Change 20, 211–213.
Bellamy, J., Ross, H., Ewing, S., Meppem, T. 2002. Integrated
Catchment Management: Learning From the Australian Experience
for the Murray-Darling Basin. CSIRO, Brisbane, 236 pp.
Brown, R., Ashley, R., Farrelly, M., 2011. Political and Professional
Agency Entrapment: An Agenda for Urban Water Research. Water
Resour Manage 25, 4037–4050.
Collins, K., Ison, R., 2009. Jumping off Arnstein’s ladder: social
learning as a new policy paradigm for climate change adaptation.
Environmental Policy and Governance 19, 358–373.
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.
Connell, D., 2011. Water Reform and the Federal System in the
Murray-Darling Basin. Water Resour Manage 25, 3993–4003.
Daniell, K., Máñez Costa, M., Ferrand, N., Kingsborough, A., Coad,
P., Ribarova, I., 2011. Aiding multi-level decision-making processes
for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Regional
Environmental Change 11, 243–258.
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:
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Dovers, S.R., Hezri, A.A., 2010. Institutions and policy processes:
the means to the ends of adaptation. Wiley Interdisciplinary
Reviews: Climate Change 1, 212–231.
Head, B., 2008. Wicked Problems in Public Policy. Public Policy 3,
101–118.
Ison, R., Collins, K., Colvin, J., Jiggins, J., Roggero, P.P., Seddaiu,
G., Steyaert, P., Toderi, M., Zanolla, C., 2011. Sustainable
Catchment Managing in a Climate Changing World. Water Resour
Manage 25, 3977–3992.
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
Miller, F., Osbahr, H., Boyd, E., Thomalla, F., Bharwani, S.,
Ziervogel, G., Walker, B., Birkmann, J., van der Leeuw, S.,
Rockström, J., others, 2010. Resilience and vulnerability:
complementary or conflicting concepts. Ecology and Society 15, 11.
Mitchell, C.A., (ed.) 2009. Quality in Interdisciplinary and
Transdisciplinary Postgraduate Research and its Supervision: Ideas
for Good Practice. Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS, Sydney.
NWC (2011) The National Water Initiative - securing Australia's
water future: 2011. National Water Commission, Canberra.
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.
Pittock, J., Finlayson, M., Gardner, A., McKay, C., 2010. Changing
character: The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and climate
change in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. Environmental and
Planning Law Journal 27, 401–425.
Pittock, J., 2011. National climate change policies and sustainable
water management: Conflicts and synergies. Ecol & Society 16, 25.
Reed, M., Evely, A.C., Cundill, G., Fazey, I.R.A., Glass, J., Laing,
A., Newig, J., Parrish, B., Prell, C., Raymond, C., Stringer, L., 2010.
What is social learning? Ecology and Society 15, r1.
Ross, A., Martinez-Santos, P., 2010. The challenge of groundwater
governance: case studies from Spain and Australia. Regional
Environmental Change 10, 299–310.
Further Information
Naomi Rubenstein, Philip Wallis*, Ray Ison
Monash Sustainability Institute
Monash University
Phil.Wallis@monash.edu
Lee Godden
Melbourne Law School
The University of Melbourne
© Water Governance Research Initiative, 2012
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