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Karen Hussey knows a thing or two about water management. The political scientist is the Chair of the ANU Water Initiative, which brings together 80 researchers from a multitude of disciplines to look at how Australia and other nations are dealing with H2O. As a postdoctoral researcher at the National Europe Centre, she’s also been comparing international approaches to resource management to learn more about best practices worldwide.
 
Reporter: Where does water management rate among the major international issues?

Karen Hussey: Achieving sustainable water management is one of the most significant environmental challenges that we face in the 21st century. When we add climate change to the equation, we realise that long term management of water cannot be tackled in isolation and the projections for future water availability only add to the urgency. Both climate change and water are issues in the media daily now (helped along by the current drought) and significant research efforts – like our own at ANU – are focused on water resource management from various perspectives. Reflecting the magnitude of the water challenge, we can see a trend towards national, overarching policy frameworks to deal with water, and a convergence of how we approach the issues is taking place across the world.

R: Water systems don’t respect national and regional boundaries. How are different countries dealing with the problem of regulating across multiple jurisdictions?

KH: Managing transboundary water is hugely contentious and we can see that in major water basins around the world, whether you’re talking about the Nile, the Mississippi, or the Murray-Darling. Take the European Union, where the Danube River crosses 17 national jurisdictions. Our capacity to manage water as an environmental resource is severely hampered by the conflict that exists between users, between jurisdictions, and by virtue of the fact that water is not a fixed commodity and varies seasonally. The trend towards national framework approaches is an attempt to overcome the issue of multiple jurisdictions.
 
In the EU, the development of the Water Framework Directive was a watershed, because it allows each of the 27 member states to have a consistent and concerted approach to water management while allowing for their unique contexts. The same can be seen in South Africa and Canada. Perhaps surprisingly, the only place that hasn’t really gone for a national approach is the US, which suffers from severe fragmentation across states in their regulatory approach. Each of its states is doing different things and instead of coming together in an holistic approach, there’s a lot of conflict.

R: How are different countries coping with the competing demands of water users and environmental flows?

KH: The most significant step forward in water resource management over the last decade has been the understanding that we need to put the environment first. We’ve always had strong interest groups and almost across the board agriculture accounts for approximately 70 per cent of water use. That’s always going to be the main sector to address, and a problem given the competing imperatives of food production and environmental sustainability. But, as the profile of environmental problems has grown, we’ve started to recognise that we need to approach water sustainably. If you look at the Water Framework Directive in Europe or the National Water Initiative in Australia or the Water Bill in South Africa, all of them provide for the environment before allocating water for consumptive use. There’s at least tacit acknowledgement that the environment and sustainability need to be afforded due recognition. When it comes to comparing the different approaches around the world, it’s too early to say which systems are doing a better job for the environment, but all policy frameworks are hindered by the difficulties in defining what is ‘environmentally sustainable’ and the political realities of reallocating water away from powerful sectors.

R: Why are so many nations using market-based instruments for water regulation? Are these kinds of instruments the best approach?

KH: I would be inclined to think that we need a suite of instruments: you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and just go for market-based approaches. There are social equity issues that need to be considered when you use the market to regulate something that is essentially a basic human need. That said, economic instruments can and will play a very important role, particularly in relation to demand management.

Australia is using water trading, and there is an effort in South Africa to introduce a nationally consistent system of water entitlements, which they then hope will contribute to a water trading scheme much like ours. In Europe, they’re relying heavily on full-cost recovery pricing. This is where the price that you pay for water – whether you’re an industrial, agricultural or residential user – reflects the environmental cost of taking the water out of the environment. But this is something quite nebulous and it’s unclear how they will determine what the price is. However, what’s interesting is their early initiatives for redistributing income achieved through full cost recovery pricing to other catchments for NRM projects and the like. The other things that are being looked at on the supply side in regions of scarcity are desalination plants, for instance in Spain. In the US, they do some water trading, but their regulatory situation is so fragmented that water trading would be almost impossible between states. There is also some water trading in terms of quality going on in North America, which is something that we do with salinity credits but doesn’t really have a big market.

R: What are some of the approaches to water management being taken in the developing world, for instance in India and China?

KH: The UN predicts that by the middle of this century, at worst seven billion people in 60 countries and at best 2 billion in 48 countries will be faced with water scarcity, depending on factors like population growth and policy making. Interestingly climate change is expected to account for an estimated 20 per cent of this increase in global scarcity. Add to this the fact that water quality will worsen with rising pollution levels and water temperatures, and we’re talking about a huge, human problem on a global scale. I don’t think it is overstating it to say that water security will need to be afforded as much attention as our traditional conceptions of security (and therefore hopefully the budget to suit).

Both China and India have recognised that water resource management is a huge challenge for them. China has serious problems in relation to the over-extraction of groundwater and they’ve recognised that they need to start looking at new forms of governance for water, so they’re looking carefully at Australia’s regional management approach. India has major problems with sanitation and water quality.

In addition to national efforts, water is being tackled at the international level. Two of the eight Millennium Goals deal with water quality and the right to safe drinking water ... but we are nowhere near meeting those goals. To put it bluntly, if the developed world struggles as they do with water resource management, in spite of our financial and human resources, then the challenges in the developing world are exponentially greater.

R: How important is community involvement in water management?

KH: I think it is fairly well accepted now that if you want any policy – water or otherwise – to work then you need to have local communities aware and involved in the process. There’s been a lot of work done on values, communication and the need to bring the community along with you. In Europe, particularly Northern Europe, they have very strong deliberative processes which, while expensive, do deliver the acceptability and therefore compliance that is the ultimate objective. For instance the Danes hold consultative forums involving broad spectrums of the community - often taking them away for days at a time to workshop possible scenarios.