Managing the Murray–Darling Basin

We are entering an entirely new era in how Australia manages its water and protects its environment. For the first time, the surface water, groundwater and environmental resources of the national heartland, the Murray–Darling Basin, will be managed as a whole, according to a single, legally enforceable plan — the Basin Plan. This is critical, for the Basin’s waters directly support 3 million Australians, as well as internationally protected wetlands, important river channels, billabongs and streams. The Basin’s exports earn $9 billion a year and produces sufficient food to feed around 20 million people.

In managing the Basin as a whole, Australia is tackling a challenge that has never yet been surmounted anywhere in the world: to restore a major river system to a healthy state so that it can sustain its environment, enhance and maintain the services it provides, and support the communities and industries that depend on it.

A century of construction of dams, weirs, and barrages has enabled the storage of 35,000 gigalitres¹ of water within the Basin. This is delivered to thousands of farmers and other users through state-regulated entitlement systems. It is chiefly used to produce food and fibre, enabling the economic and social development of the Basin and its contribution to the nation. It also supports major urban communities and important cultural and recreational activities.

However, enormous strain is now being placed on the Basin’s communities, industries and natural environment by a combination of prolonged drought, emerging changes in climate and the impact of past water-allocation decisions. These factors will all be taken into account in future planning and management.

Many of the Basin’s rivers and groundwater systems are stressed and over-allocated. Lack of water and the absence of natural flooding are having a grave impact on iconic wetlands and other important environmental sites, such as the Coorong, the Murray Mouth, floodplains and wetlands. Individual communities face water restrictions. Industries face shortages, uncertainty and economic losses.

The Basin Plan will be based on the best and latest scientific, social, cultural and economic knowledge, evidence and analysis. In preparing the plan, the Murray–Darling Basin Authority will consult extensively with Basin state and territory governments, key stakeholders, and rural and regional communities across the Basin. In future, the plan will be reviewed and revised, and will continue to evolve as it is implemented and as new information and knowledge becomes available.

The plan will seek to protect and restore key environmental assets — rivers, streams, wetlands, forests, floodplains and billabongs — and key ecosystem functions which are essential to the life of the rivers and their surrounding landscapes, as well as to human activities and cultural values. The Basin Plan must also take into account the impact of this protection and restoration on individual communities, industries, regions and the wider economy.

What matters most in any plan is its outcome. In the long term, as the Basin Plan is put into action, Australians will see:

• improved water security for all water uses
• more natural flow regimes in the rivers
• key forests, floodplains, rivers, streams and wetlands being restored to a sustainable level of health, with improved conditions for populations of native fish, birds and other fauna
• improved water quality for users and the environment.
• The Basin Plan will also provide a framework that can contribute to other positive outcomes, such as:
• sustainable industries demonstrating leadership in water-use efficiency, cutting-edge technologies, new crops and innovative land and water management suited to the Australian environment
• vibrant river communities demonstrating leadership in restoring their local environments, developing new opportunities, and responding to the challenges of water scarcity with imagination and enterprise.

Achieving such outcomes when the Basin’s water resources are under great stress, after years of drought and amid signs that the climate is becoming drier, will be neither easy nor quick. Despite the urgency, it will be a number of years before the new plan’s provisions, including sustainable limits on water diversions, come into effect. This timing provides the opportunity for planned adjustments to occur.

While certain benefits of the Basin Plan may take some time to eventuate, other benefits will become apparent more quickly. For instance, the plan will bring greater certainty to water users and support their ability to adapt or to find new opportunities. Under the plan, water users will have greater flexibility in buying and selling water through improved water markets.

While certain roles and responsibilities for the management of the Basin’s water resources have been conferred on the MDBA by the Water Act, other activities are best developed and delivered by other entities, particularly the Basin state and territory governments. Catchment management authorities, natural resource management boards and related institutions, industry associations, enterprises, non-government organisations, Indigenous communities, householders and individuals will all also have an important part to play.

¹ A gigalitre is 1 billion (i.e. 1,000 million) litres of water, the equivalent of about 400 Olympic swimming pools.