Water Governance: Legal and Policy Analysis

The Tropical Rivers and Coastal Knowledge project Collaborative Water Planning has now published its third volume, Water planning: a legal and policy analysis. This volume introduces and analyses the legal and policy framework within which collaborative water planning exists, with a particular emphasis on how it relates to Northern Australia.

This volume starts at the Commonwealth level looking at the Constitution and its role in water planning, as well as more recent policy and legislative aspects including the National Water Initiative; Native Title and Cultural Heritage legislation; water security planning and the Commonwealth Water Act (2007); legislative requirements at a State level; and generic features of water legislation.

A description and analysis of the water planning legal framework state by state is also included.

This state-by-state analysis emphasises aspects germane to collaborative water planning referred to in earlier volumes, including public participation, socio-economic values, Indigenous participation, tools for tradeoffs and monitoring and evaluation of the water planning process.

Download the report here

or find out more information about the TRaCK project here.