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How will the Murray-Darling Basin Plan affect Indigenous communities?

In October 2010, the CSIRO published a report on the impacts of change in water availability on Indigenous people of the Murray-Darling Basin. The report was commissioned by the Murray Darling Basin Authority in January as a scoping study to assist in understanding the range of issues, and to explore the ways in which Indigenous interests in water could be addressed within the Basin Plan.

The report is based on consultation with Indigenous groups, literature reviews and three case studies selected from across the Murray-Darling.The final report includes three central recommendations, and a proposal for six areas of futher research and inquiry to contribute to the effective management of water resources in the basin.

Recommendations

The report makes a number of recommendations to reduce the negative impacts arising from the introduction of the Basin Plan and to enhance the positive impacts. The recommendations are consistent with the NWI and Closing the Gap Indigenous affairs policy.

1. Increase benefits to Indigenous people through improved environmental water management. This requires improved mechanisms and frameworks to identify and incorporate Indigenous values and to facilitate increased Indigenous involvement in water resource management. It also needs to broaden and strengthen the application and use of Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs) in water resources management.
2. MDBA to set benchmarks for accreditation of State Basin Plans that reflect Indigenous water needs. The lack of information means there needs to be systematic and transparent assessments of Indigenous water use requirements at the catchment scale. These assessments could be done through Indigenous Water Management Plans for each catchment to achieve the objectives of the NWI. Indigenous groups, such as CMA reference groups, need support to have a great role and responsibility in Indigenous Water management Plans and increase collaboration between these groups across the Basin. Finance needs to be provided to purchase environmental water by Indigenous groups and the cost of delivery to areas/features/purposes. Investigation is needed of the governance issues associated with a range of entitlement holding and management models. Assistance is needed to develop governance arrangements to support Indigenous management of water allocations.
3. Regional economic development and planning – Indigenous livelihood opportunities from SDLs. Government and Basin agencies could achieve region-wide benefits through facilitating Indigenous employment opportunities in environmental services.
   

Areas for futher research

The report recommends that to effectively manage water resources in the MDB, there needs to be further research across a range of areas relating to Indigenous water management. This is necessary to develop effective mitigation strategies and to enable monitoring of social impacts from changes in water availability. Priority areas for research suggested by the inquiry include improved:

1. baseline information, e.g. on Indigenous commercial water use, socio economic regional profiles etc which will also facilitate monitoring
2. understanding of the barriers to Indigenous participation in the water market
3. understanding of the ‘cultural flows’ concept and how it aligns with environmental flows including under differing management models
4. techniques to quantify Indigenous environmental and cultural water use and the specification of Indigenous water requirements
5. water policy instruments to better accommodate Indigenous people’s cultural, environmental and economic needs
6. understandings of the context for Indigenous water resources through case study research to describe and test multiple cultural and environmental benefits from environmental water allocations.

The authors suggest that any research needs to further the conceptual and empirical understanding of Indigenous water requirements and, in doing so, fully involve Indigenous people in subsequent policy development and decision-making.

Download the Report

 

The full report is available for download at www.csiro.au/science/MDBscience

Citation

Jackson, S., Moggridge, B. and Robinson, C. 2010. Summary of the scoping study: Effects of change in water availability on Indigenous people of the Murray-Darling Basin. CSIRO: Water for a Healthy Country Flagship Report series.