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Integrative Governance of Environmental Water in Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin: Evolving Challenges and Emerging Pathways

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Abstract

Integration, a widely promoted response to the multi-scale complexities of social-environmental sustainability, is diversely and sometimes poorly conceptualized. In this paper we explore integrative governance, which we define as an iterative and contextual process for negotiating and advancing the common interest. We ground this definition in a discussion of institutional factors conditioning integrative governance of environmental water in Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin. The Murray–Darling Basin is an iconic system of social-ecological complexity, evocative of large-scale conservation challenges in other developed arid river basins. Our critical assessment of integrative governance practices in that context emerges through analysis of interviews with policy participants and documents pertaining to environmental water management in the tri-state area of southwestern New South Wales, northwestern Victoria, and the South Australian Riverland. We identify four linked challenges: (i) decision support for developing socially robust environmental water management goals, (ii) resource constraints on adaptive practice, (iii) inter-state differences in participatory decision-making and devolution of authority, and (iv) representative inclusion in decision-making. Our appraisal demonstrates these as pivotal challenges for integrative governance in the common interest. We conclude by offering a perspective on the potential for supporting integrative governance through the bridging capacity of Australia’s Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder.

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Notes

  1. Simon (1972, p. 161) postulated that expectations of the attainable, conditioned by bounded understandings of context, define aspiration level. He created the neologism “satisficing” to describe the process of identifying and pursuing alternatives that meet this aspiration level.

  2. Any setting with high decision stakes, a plurality of legitimate interests, and irreducible uncertainties will ultimately confront decision-makers with “super-wicked”, “diabolical” or even “tragic” alternatives (Brown 2007; Garnaut 2008; Levin et al. 2012).

  3. For example, integrating around water resources has been conceptualized in terms of modelling tools (Holzkämper et al. 2012), knowledge types and sources (e.g., science and local knowledge) (Failing et al. 2007), management processes and sectors (Jønch-Clausen and Fugl 2001), mental models (Kolkman et al. 2005) and participant frames (Mostert et al. 2008), among other approaches.

  4. Bridging organizations relate closely to the concept of boundary organizations (see Guston 2001), but differ in scope; ‘boundary organization’ typically refers to a narrower focus on science-policy interface (Crona and Parker 2012).

  5. Cultural water has been defined broadly by Murray-Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations as “water entitlements that are legally and beneficially owned by the Indigenous Nations and are of sufficient and adequate quantity to improve the spiritual, cultural, environmental, social and economic conditions of those Indigenous Nations” (MLDRIN 2007: Article 1).

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by Brown University and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. We wish to acknowledge the generous contributions of Keith Spangler. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and encouragement.

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  1. Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Zachary Bischoff-Mattson & Amanda H. Lynch

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  1. Zachary Bischoff-Mattson
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  2. Amanda H. Lynch
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Correspondence to Zachary Bischoff-Mattson.

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Bischoff-Mattson, Z., Lynch, A.H. Integrative Governance of Environmental Water in Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin: Evolving Challenges and Emerging Pathways. Environmental Management 60, 41–56 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-017-0864-x

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