A new framework to better manage large river basins
URL: https://www.mdba.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/a-new-framework-to-better-manage-large-river-basins.pdf
Authors: Rebecca E Lester, Galen Holt, Georgia K. Dwyer, Joel Bailey and David Robertson
Date of publication: September 2025
Water management aims to balance community values, such as clean water and healthy ecosystems, with economic and cultural needs. To manage water resources effectively, governments need to balance different goals, and a popular framework called RAD (Resist, Accept, Direct) helps guide decisions. RAD encourages managers to choose whether to resist change, accept it, or guide it towards a more sustainable outcome.
Drawing on experiences from Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin, the researchers enhanced the RAD framework to include the outcomes of interventions, and regional and catchment-based assessments, while layering future climate scenarios to account for uncertainty.
Key findings / recommendations:
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Despite better tools and knowledge for managing large rivers, major challenges remain, including diverse values, scale and variability, and monitoring limitations.
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Opportunities for improving management include integration of values, collaborative partnerships, and embracing uncertainty.
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Under example scenarios, at the regional scale, low-intensity interventions provided modest improvements in condition. High-intensity interventions yielded significantly better outcomes but for a greater investment (that is, more water added). In each case, this suggested a ‘direct’ strategy, where an intervention could be used to encourage a desirable outcome which may be different from what had been there previously.
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Finer-scale analysis revealed substantial variation across catchments and management targets. Some interventions worked well for certain species (e.g. native fish) but poorly for others (e.g. waterbirds), and sensitivity to climate change also varied by region, noting that these results are for demonstration purposes only and are not intended to be used for management.
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The adapted framework provides a transparent, scalable, and repeatable tool for decision-making under uncertainty. Overall, it strengthens the operationalisation of RAD by offering a robust, flexible method for navigating complex environmental futures.
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