Indigenous Water Management: Priorities for the next five years

Abstract

Indigenous systems of resource management coexist alongside and interact with the relatively recently introduced and rapidly transforming institutional systems of State land and water management. These latter systems encompass a mix of regulatory and market-based allocation mechanisms, incorporate scientific methods of resource assessment and management, and increasingly aspire to achieve transparency in water planning procedures, including opportunities for public participation in water management decisions. Much of the impetus for reform comes from the 2004 National Water Initiative (NWI), which for the first time in Australian water policy history explicitly recognised Indigenous rights and interests in water. Parties to the NWI have agreed that water-access entitlements and planning frameworks should recognise Indigenous needs (Jackson and Altman 2009).