is a water law and policy specialist, bringing together skills and experience in aquatic ecology,... more is a water law and policy specialist, bringing together skills and experience in aquatic ecology, environmental planning and water governance. She has worked in water resource management since 2002, in both the private and public sectors. Erin's research focus is the legal rights for rivers, which saw four rivers receive the status of legal persons in 2017. Erin is recognized internationally for her research into this groundbreaking new field, and the challenges and opportunities it creates for protecting the multiple social, cultural and natural values of rivers, and is currently working on a book, coming out in December 2018. Her work is informed by comparative analysis across Australia, New Zealand, the USA, India, Colombia, and Chile. Erin's PhD examined the role of environmental water managers in Australia and the USA in delivering efficient, effective and legitimate environmental water outcomes in the context of transferable water rights and water markets. Erin is a teaching fellow at the University of Melbourne Law School, and is working as a consultant for The World Bank, leading a global systematic review of water markets, and their role in water security and sustainable development.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science, May 24, 2023
In settler colonial states like Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, water for the environment and... more In settler colonial states like Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, water for the environment and the water rights of Indigenous Peoples often share the common experience of being too little and too late. Water pathways have been constrained and defined by settler colonialism, and as a result, settler state water law has both a legitimacy problem, in failing to acknowledge or implement the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and a sustainability problem, as the health of water systems continues to decline. In both Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, the focus of water law has historically been to facilitate use of the water resource to support economic development, excluding the rights of Indigenous Peoples and poorly protecting water ecosystems. However, in the early 21st century, both countries made significant advances in recognizing the needs of the environment and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) provides an important bicultural and bijural framework that is beginning to influence water management. In 2017, as part of a Treaty dispute settlement, Aotearoa New Zealand passed legislation to recognize Te Awa Tupua (the Whanganui River) as a legal person and created a new collaborative governance regime for the river, embedding the interests and values of Māori at the heart of river management. In Australia, water recovery processes to increase environmental flows have been under way since the 1990s, using a combination of water buybacks and water savings through increased efficiency. There has been growing awareness of Indigenous water rights in Australia, although progress to formally return water rights to Indigenous Peoples remains glacially slow. Like Aotearoa New Zealand, in 2017, Australia also passed its first legislation that recognized a river (the Birrarung/Yarra River) as a living entity and, in doing so, formally recognized the responsibilities of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people as Traditional Owners of the river. This trend toward more holistic river management under a relational paradigm, in which the relationships between peoples and places are centered and celebrated, creates a genuine opportunity for water governance in settler states that begins to address both the legitimacy and sustainability flaws in settler state water law. However, these symbolic shifts must be underpinned by relationships of genuine trust between Indigenous Peoples and the state, and they require significant investment from the state in their implementation.
Environmental water programs have complex goals and operate over long periods, and often across l... more Environmental water programs have complex goals and operate over long periods, and often across large spatial scales. As more programs transition from high-level policy commitments to on-ground implementation, it is becoming increasingly important to evaluate the success of these programs. Traditionally, the evaluation of environmental water programs has focused on effectiveness and efficiency and monitoring reports often focus on outputs at the expense of outcomes. This chapter identifies six criteria to help define success over the long term, and guide ongoing investment to implement and sustain environmental watering programs. Three criteria emphasize the broad policy goals of environmental water programs: efficacy, efficiency, and legitimacy. The next three criteria reflect the essential implementation conditions: legal and administrative frameworks, organizational capacity, and partnerships. Together, these policy goals and practical conditions define the features of successful environmental water programs, and provide an essential tool for guiding investment and evaluation of these programs around the world. This multicriteria approach is illustrated using case studies from the Columbia River Basin in the United States and the Murray–Darling Basin in Australia. Performance management for environmental water programs is not easy, and this chapter does not pretend to provide all the answers. However, by developing a structure to guide future evaluation and investment, we hope to facilitate knowledge transfer in a coordinated and coherent way.
Allocation of water specifically to the environment (often dubbed 'environmental water' or 'envir... more Allocation of water specifically to the environment (often dubbed 'environmental water' or 'environmental flows') can be contentious within government, among irrigators and between community members. The reduction in supply of fresh water has led to questions surrounding the efficiencies and ecological value of securing these adequate flows for waterways. This literature review examines the evidence on these perceptions of environmental water allocations, focusing foremost on general public, irrigator, Indigenous and decision-maker perspectives. Existing studies are predominantly in Global North areas such as Australia, Canada and the USA. Two themes featured strongly in the papers: the importance of personal values in the acceptance of environmental water and the perception of fairness in environmental water allocation processes. Although the research area has been expanding, there is still limited representation in types of study, disciplinary backgrounds and study locations, and as such many research opportunities remain. 'environmental water' AND 'environmental flow' AND 'community' AND 'perceptions' Scopus 79 'environmental water' OR 'environmental flow' AND 'community' AND 'perceptions', further refined by 'engagement' Web of Science 24 'environmental water' AND 'environmental flow' AND 'community perceptions' AND 'engagement' AND 'stakeholders' AND 'decision making' Google Scholar 86 'public' AND 'perceptions' AND 'environmental' AND 'water' AND 'community' AND 'environmental flows' Scopus 17 'environmental flow' AND 'river' AND 'risk perception' AND 'community' Scopus 56 'environmental water' OR ALL 'public attitudes' 'water' 'perceptions' 'river' Web of Science 58 'environmental water' AND 'citizen science' Web of Science 'environmental flow' AND 'citizen science' Scopus 1 'environmental water' AND 'environmental flow' AND 'community' AND 'perceptions' ProQuest 183 'environmental water' OR 'environmental flow' AND 'engagement', further refined by 'participat*' Web of Science 32 Total 538 74 Anna Kosovac et al.
Transformative change is needed in Australia to deal with its extinction record, which is being f... more Transformative change is needed in Australia to deal with its extinction record, which is being further exacerbated by large resource extraction approvals and increased urbanization. Legal opportunities are procedurally and jurisdictionally complex and imaginative changes that can drive recovery efforts for ecosystems are urgently needed
Increased scrutiny and contestation over recent water allocation practices and licencing decision... more Increased scrutiny and contestation over recent water allocation practices and licencing decisions in the Northern Territory (NT) have exposed numerous inadequacies in its regulatory framework. Benchmarking against the National Water Initiative shows that NT lags behind national standards for water management. We describe key weaknesses in NT's water law and policy, particularly for Indigenous rights and interests. NT is experiencing an acceleration of development, and is conceptualised as a 'hydrological frontier', where water governance has institutionalised regulatory spaces of inclusion and exclusion that entrench and (re)produce inequities and insecurities in water access. Regulations demarcate spaces in which laws and licencing practices provide certainty and security of rights for some water users, with opportunities to benefit from water development and services, while leaving much of NT (areas predominantly owned and occupied by Indigenous peoples) outside these legal protections. Water allocation and planning, as well as water service provision, continue to reinforce and reproduce racialised access to (and denial of) water rights. Combining an analysis of the law and policies that apply to water for economic development with those designed to regulate domestic water supply, we present a comprehensive and current picture of water insecurity for Indigenous peoples across the NT.
In May, the Northern Territory government granted a major water licence for a cattle station near... more In May, the Northern Territory government granted a major water licence for a cattle station near Pine Creek, west of Kakadu National Park, to use almost 14 billion litres of water a year to irrigate crops. In response, the Northern Land Council, which represents Aboriginal landholders, called for a moratorium on all further water allocations in the Territory, claiming the government had not fully consulted the community about the licence. As we document in a new paper, this kind of debate has been happening ever since the colonisation of northern Australia, often on the premise that the north's water resources are "wasted" without more economic development and subsequent increases in settler populations. Support accurate, fact-based coverage on COVID-19. Donate The Ord River was targeted for agricultural expansion in the 20th century. isthatdaves/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
The twenty-first century has already been characterised by substantive shifts in theory and law o... more The twenty-first century has already been characterised by substantive shifts in theory and law on legal personhood. 1 There have been profound legal commitments to the full personhood of disabled people, 2 dramatic new applications of personhood to natural entities such as rivers, 3 and ongoing debates on the legal personhood of animals, 4 artificial intelligence, 5 and corporations and their public interest responsibilities. 6 These shifts present an opportunity to reexamine our understanding of legal personhood. We may be able to move away from the white, European, able-bodied, cis-gender male approach to legal personhood that has dominated much of the world. This dominant approach was developed throughout the last several centuries and has largely met the needs of feudal lords, slave owners, colonial settlers, husbands, capitalists, and others that have held positions of social privilege and had the power and freedom to influence the development of theory and law. In line with the interests of these groups, the approach to legal personhood that has developed is largely in line with liberal political values that prioritise individualism and often ignores the relational nature of our socio-legal world. It emphasises the role of the state as one of non-interference with the freedom of the individual. However, this definition assumes that the individual has the power and privilege necessary to move deftly through the socio-legal world to secure their rights and interests. It disadvantages most groups and individuals that are not experiencing high levels of power and privilege and doesn't recognise the inherent interdependence that we all live within and benefit from. In describing her concern related to this dominant conception of personhood, Ngaire Naffine stated: [T]he law's idea of 'man' can be discriminatory and arbitrary and so undermine the principle of equality. … legal personification serves a social and expressive function and is therefore not fully internal to law. It sends a message to the community and expresses, on behalf of the community, who or what is to countwho matters. … Because the adult, rational, autonomous, non-pregnant human tends to be the paradigmatic person, this being possesses not only the best set of rights, but also the personal power to enforce them. This being fares best in law, is best-suited to law. 7 Naffine identifies the patriarchal forces behind the dominant approach to legal personhood and expresses concern for the large groups that are left out of this definitionwith
Increasing competition for freshwater underscores the need for scalable solutions to manage and m... more Increasing competition for freshwater underscores the need for scalable solutions to manage and mitigate the impacts of freshwater scarcity. Appropriate rules and incentives can facilitate a shift to more sustainable patterns of water use, including water reallocation to restore rivers and aquifers in regions already experiencing excessive water extractions. Despite their potential, water markets and other incentive-based approaches to manage water have struggled to scale up beyond pilot initiatives due to political resistance, financing shortfalls and data deficits. Recent advances in our understanding of incentives for sustainable water use can help to overcome persistent barriers that have hindered past efforts. We provide a review of two well-established yet disconnected fields of research and practice, and establish an agenda at their intersection: (i) incentive-based approaches to water allocation and management and (ii) theory-of-change approaches to strategic development and impact evaluation. Doing so allows us to situate incentive-based approaches to water allocation in a broader context, identifying the potential synergies and frictions with wider processes of institutional reform and infrastructure development. An explicit focus on theory-of-change approaches can identify the key assumptions and knowledge gaps hindering progress, such as drivers, enabling conditions and sequencing issues for different approaches, and the key factors constraining adoption in different contexts. We identify three areas where interdisciplinary research can support the development, implementation and evaluation of theories of change for water markets and other incentive-based water management: (1) identifying where and when to develop different types of incentives for sustainable water use, (2) designing and testing incentives as part of a broader package of institutional reforms and infrastructure investments and (3) systematically evaluating the impact of incentives using diverse data sources (from satellites to the field), multiple methods and multiple criteria. A global network of water researchers and practitioners, supported by common frameworks and observatories, can enable systematic learning from experiments to strengthen incentives for sustainable water use and scale up their adoption. 1. The challenge of sustainable water use 1.1. Spread of freshwater scarcity Over half of the global population experiences severe water scarcity for at least one month of the year [1]. Urbanisation, rising incomes, changing diets, and growing populations are intensifying competition for water, whilst climate change is decreasing the reliability of available supplies and infrastructure in many areas. Experiences from Cape Town to California are emblematic of these global trends. By 2050, imbalances between supply and demand are projected to involve an urban surface-water deficit of up to 6.75 million m 3 [2] with approximately four billion people expected to live in severely stressed river basins [3]. These pressures are straining rivers and aquifers, leading to hotspots of competition for water between cities, agriculture, hydropower and ecosystems.
Water reforms in Australia over a decade ago have seen large-scale recovery of water for the envi... more Water reforms in Australia over a decade ago have seen large-scale recovery of water for the environment. While the recovery programme commenced with bilateral political support, there has remained ongoing debate in the media around the recovery volume, method of recovery and delivering of this water through the river system. In November 2017, a group of academics and practitioners met to discuss the need for legitimacy as a core component of environmental water programmes. We discuss legitimacy in terms of both the process and outcome of an environmental water programme. This article, along with the others in the special issue, makes the case for investing in community support for, and demonstrating outcomes from, environmental water programmes.
View the article online for updates and enhancements. Recent citations Integrative Groundwater St... more View the article online for updates and enhancements. Recent citations Integrative Groundwater Studies in a Small-Scale Urban Area: Case Study from the Municipality of Penafiel (NW Portugal) Liliana Freitas et al-Quenching the thirst of rapidly growing and water-insecure cities in sub-Saharan Africa Madiodio Niasse and Olli Varis-Integrating the Water Planetary Boundary With Water Management From Local to Global Scales Samuel C. Zipper et al
is a water law and policy specialist, bringing together skills and experience in aquatic ecology,... more is a water law and policy specialist, bringing together skills and experience in aquatic ecology, environmental planning and water governance. She has worked in water resource management since 2002, in both the private and public sectors. Erin's research focus is the legal rights for rivers, which saw four rivers receive the status of legal persons in 2017. Erin is recognized internationally for her research into this groundbreaking new field, and the challenges and opportunities it creates for protecting the multiple social, cultural and natural values of rivers, and is currently working on a book, coming out in December 2018. Her work is informed by comparative analysis across Australia, New Zealand, the USA, India, Colombia, and Chile. Erin's PhD examined the role of environmental water managers in Australia and the USA in delivering efficient, effective and legitimate environmental water outcomes in the context of transferable water rights and water markets. Erin is a teaching fellow at the University of Melbourne Law School, and is working as a consultant for The World Bank, leading a global systematic review of water markets, and their role in water security and sustainable development.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science, May 24, 2023
In settler colonial states like Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, water for the environment and... more In settler colonial states like Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, water for the environment and the water rights of Indigenous Peoples often share the common experience of being too little and too late. Water pathways have been constrained and defined by settler colonialism, and as a result, settler state water law has both a legitimacy problem, in failing to acknowledge or implement the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and a sustainability problem, as the health of water systems continues to decline. In both Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, the focus of water law has historically been to facilitate use of the water resource to support economic development, excluding the rights of Indigenous Peoples and poorly protecting water ecosystems. However, in the early 21st century, both countries made significant advances in recognizing the needs of the environment and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) provides an important bicultural and bijural framework that is beginning to influence water management. In 2017, as part of a Treaty dispute settlement, Aotearoa New Zealand passed legislation to recognize Te Awa Tupua (the Whanganui River) as a legal person and created a new collaborative governance regime for the river, embedding the interests and values of Māori at the heart of river management. In Australia, water recovery processes to increase environmental flows have been under way since the 1990s, using a combination of water buybacks and water savings through increased efficiency. There has been growing awareness of Indigenous water rights in Australia, although progress to formally return water rights to Indigenous Peoples remains glacially slow. Like Aotearoa New Zealand, in 2017, Australia also passed its first legislation that recognized a river (the Birrarung/Yarra River) as a living entity and, in doing so, formally recognized the responsibilities of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people as Traditional Owners of the river. This trend toward more holistic river management under a relational paradigm, in which the relationships between peoples and places are centered and celebrated, creates a genuine opportunity for water governance in settler states that begins to address both the legitimacy and sustainability flaws in settler state water law. However, these symbolic shifts must be underpinned by relationships of genuine trust between Indigenous Peoples and the state, and they require significant investment from the state in their implementation.
Environmental water programs have complex goals and operate over long periods, and often across l... more Environmental water programs have complex goals and operate over long periods, and often across large spatial scales. As more programs transition from high-level policy commitments to on-ground implementation, it is becoming increasingly important to evaluate the success of these programs. Traditionally, the evaluation of environmental water programs has focused on effectiveness and efficiency and monitoring reports often focus on outputs at the expense of outcomes. This chapter identifies six criteria to help define success over the long term, and guide ongoing investment to implement and sustain environmental watering programs. Three criteria emphasize the broad policy goals of environmental water programs: efficacy, efficiency, and legitimacy. The next three criteria reflect the essential implementation conditions: legal and administrative frameworks, organizational capacity, and partnerships. Together, these policy goals and practical conditions define the features of successful environmental water programs, and provide an essential tool for guiding investment and evaluation of these programs around the world. This multicriteria approach is illustrated using case studies from the Columbia River Basin in the United States and the Murray–Darling Basin in Australia. Performance management for environmental water programs is not easy, and this chapter does not pretend to provide all the answers. However, by developing a structure to guide future evaluation and investment, we hope to facilitate knowledge transfer in a coordinated and coherent way.
Allocation of water specifically to the environment (often dubbed 'environmental water' or 'envir... more Allocation of water specifically to the environment (often dubbed 'environmental water' or 'environmental flows') can be contentious within government, among irrigators and between community members. The reduction in supply of fresh water has led to questions surrounding the efficiencies and ecological value of securing these adequate flows for waterways. This literature review examines the evidence on these perceptions of environmental water allocations, focusing foremost on general public, irrigator, Indigenous and decision-maker perspectives. Existing studies are predominantly in Global North areas such as Australia, Canada and the USA. Two themes featured strongly in the papers: the importance of personal values in the acceptance of environmental water and the perception of fairness in environmental water allocation processes. Although the research area has been expanding, there is still limited representation in types of study, disciplinary backgrounds and study locations, and as such many research opportunities remain. 'environmental water' AND 'environmental flow' AND 'community' AND 'perceptions' Scopus 79 'environmental water' OR 'environmental flow' AND 'community' AND 'perceptions', further refined by 'engagement' Web of Science 24 'environmental water' AND 'environmental flow' AND 'community perceptions' AND 'engagement' AND 'stakeholders' AND 'decision making' Google Scholar 86 'public' AND 'perceptions' AND 'environmental' AND 'water' AND 'community' AND 'environmental flows' Scopus 17 'environmental flow' AND 'river' AND 'risk perception' AND 'community' Scopus 56 'environmental water' OR ALL 'public attitudes' 'water' 'perceptions' 'river' Web of Science 58 'environmental water' AND 'citizen science' Web of Science 'environmental flow' AND 'citizen science' Scopus 1 'environmental water' AND 'environmental flow' AND 'community' AND 'perceptions' ProQuest 183 'environmental water' OR 'environmental flow' AND 'engagement', further refined by 'participat*' Web of Science 32 Total 538 74 Anna Kosovac et al.
Transformative change is needed in Australia to deal with its extinction record, which is being f... more Transformative change is needed in Australia to deal with its extinction record, which is being further exacerbated by large resource extraction approvals and increased urbanization. Legal opportunities are procedurally and jurisdictionally complex and imaginative changes that can drive recovery efforts for ecosystems are urgently needed
Increased scrutiny and contestation over recent water allocation practices and licencing decision... more Increased scrutiny and contestation over recent water allocation practices and licencing decisions in the Northern Territory (NT) have exposed numerous inadequacies in its regulatory framework. Benchmarking against the National Water Initiative shows that NT lags behind national standards for water management. We describe key weaknesses in NT's water law and policy, particularly for Indigenous rights and interests. NT is experiencing an acceleration of development, and is conceptualised as a 'hydrological frontier', where water governance has institutionalised regulatory spaces of inclusion and exclusion that entrench and (re)produce inequities and insecurities in water access. Regulations demarcate spaces in which laws and licencing practices provide certainty and security of rights for some water users, with opportunities to benefit from water development and services, while leaving much of NT (areas predominantly owned and occupied by Indigenous peoples) outside these legal protections. Water allocation and planning, as well as water service provision, continue to reinforce and reproduce racialised access to (and denial of) water rights. Combining an analysis of the law and policies that apply to water for economic development with those designed to regulate domestic water supply, we present a comprehensive and current picture of water insecurity for Indigenous peoples across the NT.
In May, the Northern Territory government granted a major water licence for a cattle station near... more In May, the Northern Territory government granted a major water licence for a cattle station near Pine Creek, west of Kakadu National Park, to use almost 14 billion litres of water a year to irrigate crops. In response, the Northern Land Council, which represents Aboriginal landholders, called for a moratorium on all further water allocations in the Territory, claiming the government had not fully consulted the community about the licence. As we document in a new paper, this kind of debate has been happening ever since the colonisation of northern Australia, often on the premise that the north's water resources are "wasted" without more economic development and subsequent increases in settler populations. Support accurate, fact-based coverage on COVID-19. Donate The Ord River was targeted for agricultural expansion in the 20th century. isthatdaves/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
The twenty-first century has already been characterised by substantive shifts in theory and law o... more The twenty-first century has already been characterised by substantive shifts in theory and law on legal personhood. 1 There have been profound legal commitments to the full personhood of disabled people, 2 dramatic new applications of personhood to natural entities such as rivers, 3 and ongoing debates on the legal personhood of animals, 4 artificial intelligence, 5 and corporations and their public interest responsibilities. 6 These shifts present an opportunity to reexamine our understanding of legal personhood. We may be able to move away from the white, European, able-bodied, cis-gender male approach to legal personhood that has dominated much of the world. This dominant approach was developed throughout the last several centuries and has largely met the needs of feudal lords, slave owners, colonial settlers, husbands, capitalists, and others that have held positions of social privilege and had the power and freedom to influence the development of theory and law. In line with the interests of these groups, the approach to legal personhood that has developed is largely in line with liberal political values that prioritise individualism and often ignores the relational nature of our socio-legal world. It emphasises the role of the state as one of non-interference with the freedom of the individual. However, this definition assumes that the individual has the power and privilege necessary to move deftly through the socio-legal world to secure their rights and interests. It disadvantages most groups and individuals that are not experiencing high levels of power and privilege and doesn't recognise the inherent interdependence that we all live within and benefit from. In describing her concern related to this dominant conception of personhood, Ngaire Naffine stated: [T]he law's idea of 'man' can be discriminatory and arbitrary and so undermine the principle of equality. … legal personification serves a social and expressive function and is therefore not fully internal to law. It sends a message to the community and expresses, on behalf of the community, who or what is to countwho matters. … Because the adult, rational, autonomous, non-pregnant human tends to be the paradigmatic person, this being possesses not only the best set of rights, but also the personal power to enforce them. This being fares best in law, is best-suited to law. 7 Naffine identifies the patriarchal forces behind the dominant approach to legal personhood and expresses concern for the large groups that are left out of this definitionwith
Increasing competition for freshwater underscores the need for scalable solutions to manage and m... more Increasing competition for freshwater underscores the need for scalable solutions to manage and mitigate the impacts of freshwater scarcity. Appropriate rules and incentives can facilitate a shift to more sustainable patterns of water use, including water reallocation to restore rivers and aquifers in regions already experiencing excessive water extractions. Despite their potential, water markets and other incentive-based approaches to manage water have struggled to scale up beyond pilot initiatives due to political resistance, financing shortfalls and data deficits. Recent advances in our understanding of incentives for sustainable water use can help to overcome persistent barriers that have hindered past efforts. We provide a review of two well-established yet disconnected fields of research and practice, and establish an agenda at their intersection: (i) incentive-based approaches to water allocation and management and (ii) theory-of-change approaches to strategic development and impact evaluation. Doing so allows us to situate incentive-based approaches to water allocation in a broader context, identifying the potential synergies and frictions with wider processes of institutional reform and infrastructure development. An explicit focus on theory-of-change approaches can identify the key assumptions and knowledge gaps hindering progress, such as drivers, enabling conditions and sequencing issues for different approaches, and the key factors constraining adoption in different contexts. We identify three areas where interdisciplinary research can support the development, implementation and evaluation of theories of change for water markets and other incentive-based water management: (1) identifying where and when to develop different types of incentives for sustainable water use, (2) designing and testing incentives as part of a broader package of institutional reforms and infrastructure investments and (3) systematically evaluating the impact of incentives using diverse data sources (from satellites to the field), multiple methods and multiple criteria. A global network of water researchers and practitioners, supported by common frameworks and observatories, can enable systematic learning from experiments to strengthen incentives for sustainable water use and scale up their adoption. 1. The challenge of sustainable water use 1.1. Spread of freshwater scarcity Over half of the global population experiences severe water scarcity for at least one month of the year [1]. Urbanisation, rising incomes, changing diets, and growing populations are intensifying competition for water, whilst climate change is decreasing the reliability of available supplies and infrastructure in many areas. Experiences from Cape Town to California are emblematic of these global trends. By 2050, imbalances between supply and demand are projected to involve an urban surface-water deficit of up to 6.75 million m 3 [2] with approximately four billion people expected to live in severely stressed river basins [3]. These pressures are straining rivers and aquifers, leading to hotspots of competition for water between cities, agriculture, hydropower and ecosystems.
Water reforms in Australia over a decade ago have seen large-scale recovery of water for the envi... more Water reforms in Australia over a decade ago have seen large-scale recovery of water for the environment. While the recovery programme commenced with bilateral political support, there has remained ongoing debate in the media around the recovery volume, method of recovery and delivering of this water through the river system. In November 2017, a group of academics and practitioners met to discuss the need for legitimacy as a core component of environmental water programmes. We discuss legitimacy in terms of both the process and outcome of an environmental water programme. This article, along with the others in the special issue, makes the case for investing in community support for, and demonstrating outcomes from, environmental water programmes.
View the article online for updates and enhancements. Recent citations Integrative Groundwater St... more View the article online for updates and enhancements. Recent citations Integrative Groundwater Studies in a Small-Scale Urban Area: Case Study from the Municipality of Penafiel (NW Portugal) Liliana Freitas et al-Quenching the thirst of rapidly growing and water-insecure cities in sub-Saharan Africa Madiodio Niasse and Olli Varis-Integrating the Water Planetary Boundary With Water Management From Local to Global Scales Samuel C. Zipper et al
Within Australia almost since colonisation, there have been debates about whether water supply wo... more Within Australia almost since colonisation, there have been debates about whether water supply would pose a ‘limit’ to expansion of settlement. The seminal work by economist Bruce Davidson, ‘Australia Wet or Dry?’ in the mid-twentieth century critically examined the public money invested in large-scale irrigated agriculture in the north of the continent, and indirectly critiqued irrigation schemes in the Murray Darling Basin. Davidson coined the term ‘the Northern Myth’ to describe a widely held belief in the ability of Northern Australia to accommodate vastly expanded irrigated agricultural operations because of abundant water and land.
This paper examines the current policy promoting northern development, including proposed significant extensions to dams and other water supply projects in Northern Australia. It places the latest push for northern water development in the broader historical context of Australian water resource management, finding continual reiteration of ideas that engineers can ‘create water’ and find technical ‘solutions’ to overcome the limitations of a ‘drought-ridden continent’.
We argue future policy directions in Northern Australia must draw on the lessons of past water resource policy with respect to two crucial aspects: redressing the historical and current exclusion of Aboriginal peoples’ rights to water, and the embedding of environmental values in strategic water planning.
Environmental law researchers Erin O'Donnell and Julia Talbot-Jones explain what's behind recent ... more Environmental law researchers Erin O'Donnell and Julia Talbot-Jones explain what's behind recent moves to give legal personhood to rivers in India, New Zealand and elsewhere. With philosophical roots going back decades, new legal and legislative developments granting personhood to nature seek both to recognise indigenous or religious claims as well as provide new avenues for environmental protection. But what does this mean, and how will giving rights to nature be enforced? Can rivers now bring lawsuits, and can we, in turn, sue them? Presented by Lynne Haultain.
In 2010, the Victorian government created the Victorian Environmental Water Holder (VEWH) to be ‘... more In 2010, the Victorian government created the Victorian Environmental Water Holder (VEWH) to be ‘the single voice’ for environmental water rights in Victoria. The VEWH is one of many ‘environmental water managers’ (EWMs) operating around the world. EWMs use a variety of legal forms to establish legal personhood to participate in water markets to acquire and manage water for the aquatic environment. The creation and operation of EWMs raises the question: what happens when the environment is constructed in law as a legal person? I use the example of the EWMs in Australia and the USA to develop a new conceptual framework to understand how the environment is constructed in law, and how the multiple constructions can interact in unintended ways. In particular, I find that there is an apparent paradox in the creation and operation of the EWMs: they are a regulatory tool intended to increase the legibility of the environment to law, and increase the rights and powers of the environment in law, but in doing so, they reframe the environment as a mere participant in a market, which can weaken the cultural narratives that support environmental protection.
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Papers by Erin O'Donnell
This paper examines the current policy promoting northern development, including proposed significant extensions to dams and other water supply projects in Northern Australia. It places the latest push for northern water development in the broader historical context of Australian water resource management, finding continual reiteration of ideas that engineers can ‘create water’ and find technical ‘solutions’ to overcome the limitations of a ‘drought-ridden continent’.
We argue future policy directions in Northern Australia must draw on the lessons of past water resource policy with respect to two crucial aspects: redressing the historical and current exclusion of Aboriginal peoples’ rights to water, and the embedding of environmental values in strategic water planning.