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Water Science and Policy Center

Seminar Presentation

Dr. Daniel Connell

"The Institutional Response to Climate Change in the Murray-Darling Basin."

Abstract: In response to the threat of climate change in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin the national government has committed $10 billion (US) and the four states in the region have agreed to centralize water planning responsibilities. States will still have a role in implementation but within the constraints of the new MDB Basin Plan to be completed by 2011. The legislation creating the new institutional arrangements has been passed and there is very little public dispute about its high level goals - halting the long term decline in environmental conditions and resource security. But, although the language used to discuss issues has changed the old battle about the appropriate division of water for irrigation and water for the environment is still being fought. This presentation will outline the new governance arrangements put in place for the MDB in 2007/8, discuss some of the implications and review the intense debate now under way about what should be in the Basin Plan.

About the Presenter: Dr Daniel Connell works at the Australian National University developing a research alliance focusing on the capacity of water governance systems to adapt to drought and climate change in a number of major irrigation regions in the northern and southern hemispheres - in the Murray-Darling, Orange-Vaal and Colorado river basins, along the Mediterranean rim and in northern China. In 2008 he was awarded a research fellowship by Australia's National Water Commission to prepare a report comparing drought management in those regions to be completed in January 2010. His recent book, Water politics in the Murray-Darling Basin, assessed the capacity of Australia's National Water Initiative to promote integrated water resource management and the adequacy of the institutional arrangements in place in the Murray-Darling Basin.