Basin wide management framework: Issues in...
URL: https://www.mdba.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/issues-in-managing-large-river-at-basin-scale.pdf
Authors: Rebecca Lester, David Robertson, Joel Bailey and Lara Palmer
Date of publication: November 2023
Australian Government agencies are required to manage the Basin as a whole, considering future climate change and facilitating adaptation to ensure a healthy, working Basin. This presents challenges and opportunities, given the scale of the Basin, the plurality of uses and value that exist within and the uncertainties associated with what the future may hold.
This issues paper identifies current strengths, challenges and opportunities associated with Basin-wide management and then proposes a framework for Basin-wide monitoring and management to foreshadow future Commonwealth capability expansion.
Key findings / recommendations:
-
To address some of the challenges and opportunities, as well as build on the existing strengths, this issues paper proposes a framework for management at a Basin-scale.
-
Current strengths include the quality of hydrological knowledge in the Basin and the ability to understand responses at annual or seasonal timeframes.
-
Current challenges include the plurality of values held by different stakeholders, issues of scale, variability and dealing with high degrees of uncertainty regarding what the future holds and how the system will respond and the ability of historical monitoring programs to provide fit-for-purpose knowledge to guide future decision making.
-
Key opportunities exist to integrate knowledge across historical disciplines and to partner with other agencies across lines of influence.
-
To enable these opportunities to be realised, this report proposes a framework to integrate different values and assess likely future change, as well as the efficacy of different possible adaptation options.
You can copy and paste the embed code into a CMS or blog software that supports raw HTML