The National Water Initiative and its scrutiny by the National Water Commission – needs strengthening to achieve national water reform, according to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE).

The Academy strongly supports the NWI as a major blueprint for national water reform to achieve a nationally compatible system of managing surface and groundwater resources for rural and urban use that optimises economic, social and environmental outcomes.

But the NWI is hampered by varying levels of commitment from states and territories, which needs to be addressed by developing more incentives and sanctions to ensure its success.

This is a key call by ATSE in its submission to the NWC’s first biennial review of the NWI.

“Our national history is one of many state and a few Commonwealth water initiatives, many of which have tried to deal with water as if it were a discrete element of a catchment or the environment,” ATSE’s submission says.

“This has led to failed initiatives, poor planning and management of catchments and their resources, very substantial public costs and extensive community and primary industry confusion and cynicism. 

“Accordingly, there is a need to strengthen those requirements in the NWI which favour integrated catchment planning and management.

“ Australia is late in committing adequate resources and priority to catchment or river basin management and planning. “

ATSE also calls for better strategic water planning, suggesting a stronger NWI focus to encourage state and territory governments to implement strategies to drive integrated water, sewage and energy planning and to give greater focus and priority to rural reform.

“It is too late to recognise such shortcomings and constraints years later when allocations, markets and practices have become entrenched as a result of poor or narrowly-focused planning and further deterioration in catchment, river and water quality may have ensued,” ATSE’s submission says.

“The recent Commonwealth initiative in the Murray-Darling system could be argued to demonstrate that the breadth of the vision and the scale and boldness of the response must be commensurate with the scale and complexity of the problem if desired outcomes are to be secured.

“What has been the social, environmental and economic cost of the failure to recognise the need to manage and plan for this system in an integrated way over the past three decades? “

ATSE’s submission says water planning and management is difficult and there are few, if any, significant ‘win-win’ situations left.

“Serious deterioration of rivers, significant over-allocation of available water, the legacy of past agricultural practices, poor town and regional planning all require detailed analysis followed by well-considered strategic and systemic responses.

“Narrowly focused assessment, planning and management can lead to poor social and economic, as well as ecological, outcomes.”

ATSE also identifies institutional blockages as an obstacle to achieving major reform.

“Throughout the nation there are hierarchies of town and regional planning, land, water, vegetation and estuarine management, as well as agency and local government arrangements to deal with a vista of water-related issues, many of which have been left in place over decades.

“The NWI should provide for state and territorial reviews of institutional arrangements that impact on water management reforms,” ATSE says.

ATSE also calls for the NWI to get a better grip on stakeholder involvement.

“Successful catchment and water management requires a clear understanding by the various social partners of their respective roles.  The NWI does not set out these roles clearly and, as a consequence, risks failing to gain appropriate inputs and sign-off at various stages in development of documentation and the promulgation of agreed strategies.

“It is frequently difficult for lay people to see the need for system-wide responses to local problems or to bridge the many difficulties in interpreting available data, of variable quality and applicability. Those in government often fail to appreciate the same need as they strive to simplify, cut through and achieve a politically satisfactory outcome in a the allowed time frame. 

“There would be considerable benefit in clarifying and recognising the various roles of the stakeholders in a revised NWI, thereby reducing the risk that NWI initiatives will be compromised or fail to meet expectations during implementation,” ATSE suggests.