Karen Hussey knows a thing or
two about water management. The political scientist is the Chair
of the ANU Water Initiative, which brings together 80 researchers
from a multitude of disciplines to look at how Australia and
other nations are dealing with H2O. As a postdoctoral researcher
at the National Europe Centre, she’s also been comparing
international approaches to resource management to learn more
about best practices worldwide.
Reporter: Where does water management rate
among the major international issues?
Karen Hussey: Achieving sustainable water management
is one of the most significant environmental challenges that
we face in the 21st century. When we add climate change to the
equation, we realise that long term management of water cannot
be tackled in isolation and the projections for future water
availability only add to the urgency. Both climate change and
water are issues in the media daily now (helped along by the
current drought) and significant research efforts – like
our own at ANU – are focused on water resource management
from various perspectives. Reflecting the magnitude of the water
challenge, we can see a trend towards national, overarching
policy frameworks to deal with water, and a convergence of how
we approach the issues is taking place across the world.
R: Water systems don’t respect national
and regional boundaries. How are different countries dealing
with the problem of regulating across multiple jurisdictions?
KH: Managing transboundary water is hugely
contentious and we can see that in major water basins around
the world, whether you’re talking about the Nile, the
Mississippi, or the Murray-Darling. Take the European Union,
where the Danube River crosses 17 national jurisdictions. Our
capacity to manage water as an environmental resource is severely
hampered by the conflict that exists between users, between
jurisdictions, and by virtue of the fact that water is not a
fixed commodity and varies seasonally. The trend towards national
framework approaches is an attempt to overcome the issue of
multiple jurisdictions.
In the EU, the development of the Water Framework Directive
was a watershed, because it allows each of the 27 member states
to have a consistent and concerted approach to water management
while allowing for their unique contexts. The same can be seen
in South Africa and Canada. Perhaps surprisingly, the only place
that hasn’t really gone for a national approach is the
US, which suffers from severe fragmentation across states in
their regulatory approach. Each of its states is doing different
things and instead of coming together in an holistic approach,
there’s a lot of conflict.
R: How are different countries coping with
the competing demands of water users and environmental flows?
KH: The most significant step forward in water
resource management over the last decade has been the understanding
that we need to put the environment first. We’ve always
had strong interest groups and almost across the board agriculture
accounts for approximately 70 per cent of water use. That’s
always going to be the main sector to address, and a problem
given the competing imperatives of food production and environmental
sustainability. But, as the profile of environmental problems
has grown, we’ve started to recognise that we need to
approach water sustainably. If you look at the Water Framework
Directive in Europe or the National Water Initiative in Australia
or the Water Bill in South Africa, all of them provide for the
environment before allocating water for consumptive use. There’s
at least tacit acknowledgement that the environment and sustainability
need to be afforded due recognition. When it comes to comparing
the different approaches around the world, it’s too early
to say which systems are doing a better job for the environment,
but all policy frameworks are hindered by the difficulties in
defining what is ‘environmentally sustainable’ and
the political realities of reallocating water away from powerful
sectors.
R: Why are so many nations using market-based
instruments for water regulation? Are these kinds of instruments
the best approach?
KH: I would be inclined to think that we need
a suite of instruments: you don’t want to throw the baby
out with the bathwater and just go for market-based approaches.
There are social equity issues that need to be considered when
you use the market to regulate something that is essentially
a basic human need. That said, economic instruments can and
will play a very important role, particularly in relation to
demand management.
Australia is using water trading, and there is an effort in
South Africa to introduce a nationally consistent system of
water entitlements, which they then hope will contribute to
a water trading scheme much like ours. In Europe, they’re
relying heavily on full-cost recovery pricing. This is where
the price that you pay for water – whether you’re
an industrial, agricultural or residential user – reflects
the environmental cost of taking the water out of the environment.
But this is something quite nebulous and it’s unclear
how they will determine what the price is. However, what’s
interesting is their early initiatives for redistributing income
achieved through full cost recovery pricing to other catchments
for NRM projects and the like. The other things that are being
looked at on the supply side in regions of scarcity are desalination
plants, for instance in Spain. In the US, they do some water
trading, but their regulatory situation is so fragmented that
water trading would be almost impossible between states. There
is also some water trading in terms of quality going on in North
America, which is something that we do with salinity credits
but doesn’t really have a big market.
R: What are some of the approaches to water
management being taken in the developing world, for instance
in India and China?
KH: The UN predicts that by the middle of this
century, at worst seven billion people in 60 countries and at
best 2 billion in 48 countries will be faced with water scarcity,
depending on factors like population growth and policy making.
Interestingly climate change is expected to account for an estimated
20 per cent of this increase in global scarcity. Add to this
the fact that water quality will worsen with rising pollution
levels and water temperatures, and we’re talking about
a huge, human problem on a global scale. I don’t think
it is overstating it to say that water security will need to
be afforded as much attention as our traditional conceptions
of security (and therefore hopefully the budget to suit).
Both China and India have recognised that water resource management
is a huge challenge for them. China has serious problems in
relation to the over-extraction of groundwater and they’ve
recognised that they need to start looking at new forms of governance
for water, so they’re looking carefully at Australia’s
regional management approach. India has major problems with
sanitation and water quality.
In addition to national efforts, water is being tackled at the
international level. Two of the eight Millennium Goals deal
with water quality and the right to safe drinking water ...
but we are nowhere near meeting those goals. To put it bluntly,
if the developed world struggles as they do with water resource
management, in spite of our financial and human resources, then
the challenges in the developing world are exponentially greater.
R: How important is community involvement in
water management?
KH: I think it is fairly well accepted now
that if you want any policy – water or otherwise –
to work then you need to have local communities aware and involved
in the process. There’s been a lot of work done on values,
communication and the need to bring the community along with
you. In Europe, particularly Northern Europe, they have very
strong deliberative processes which, while expensive, do deliver
the acceptability and therefore compliance that is the ultimate
objective. For instance the Danes hold consultative forums involving
broad spectrums of the community - often taking them away for
days at a time to workshop possible scenarios.
^^
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ANU Reporter
Autumn 2007
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