Effective and efficient environmental water use

In my last post, I wrote about the way that environmental flows management is transitioning from policy, to implementation, to management. One of the fascinating aspects of the requirement for managing environmental water is that in addition to being effective, water use must also be efficient.

One of my favourite authors on this subject, Dr Avril Horne completed her PhD thesis on this topic. She used economic concepts of marginal benefit of additional water to the environment to figure out how to optimise the selection of flow components provided to a river or wetland. She generated environmental response curves for each flow component, which typically have an ‘S’ shape – very little benefit is gained below a flow threshold, then benefit increases as more water is provided, up to the point where benefit gained starts to level off, even when more water is provided (see the diagram below, loosely adapted from Dr Horne's work). This has two really important lessons for environmental water managers, as well as for politicians.

The 's' shape: relationship of environmental benefits to volume of environmental water 

Firstly (and this will likely not be news to many people reading this), benefits are not delivered in a linear fashion (Lin Crase has also written extensively on this), and won't measurably occur until after the first bend in the 'S' shape. This means that half the water may well have substantially less than half the environmental benefits, depending on where that volume of water gets you on the environmental response curve. For example, when bird populations breed in the Barmah Wetlands in the Murray, they do so in response to water levels. If the water then drops below the required level before breeding is complete, the nests will be abandoned. If environmental watering can’t be maintained until the birds have fledged, the benefit of using that water would be zero. The Victorian Environmental Water Holder has been using water in the past year to maintain required water levels for bird breeding events in Gunbower Forest and Barmah-Millewa Forest.

The understanding that thresholds must be met before any benefit can be realised is one that politicians can struggle with. Watching the way the new Murray-Darling Basin Plan operates will be interesting on many levels, but one of the most interesting things will be to see how this concept feeds into analysis of how effective the plan (and the accompanying water recovery) has been. The water provided under the plan is already less than that recommended to maintain the health of the Murray-Darling Basin.  If the benefits achieved are lower than we thought, we must consider whether we had sufficient water to exceed the lowest benefit thresholds.

Secondly, after the second bend in the 'S' shape, more water is no longer better, in terms of the benefits obtained per volume of water used. More benefit could potentially be obtained by using that water in another catchment, or to provide another flow component. Environmental water managers in Australia have never before had so much water requiring active management. At the Commonwealth level, most of the water entitlements held by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder are entitlements in storage, and these entitlements are incredibly flexible – access to interconnected water delivery systems and the water market means that water can be delivered to a wide variety of locations. Each decision to use water is also a decision not to use it somewhere else. As a result, environmental water managers must not only consider effectiveness, but also efficiency.

Transition to efficiency as well as efficacy is not easy, and depends on detailed understanding of the response curves of the environment. In many cases, this science won’t exist yet, and environmental water managers will be learning on the job. But as the industry matures, we should start to see efficiency playing a bigger role in environmental water decision-making.

Transitions: policy to implementation to management

Environmental flows are recognised (and, increasingly, provided) by an ever-growing list of jurisdictions around the globe. As the number of countries with basic environmental flows commitments grows, I think it’s helpful to examine the way environmental flows is transitioning from policy, to implementation, to management. In particular, in locations where water recovery has been substantial, there has been a real shift in focus from the ‘more is better’ mantra of water recovery, to using existing environmental water effectively.

How do jurisdictions go from paying lip service in policy documents and legislation, to actually putting more water back in rivers and wetlands? In 2010, the WWF and Nature Conservancy released this report, The Implementation Challenge, on the challenge of transitioning from environmental flows policy to implementation. It draws on case studies from around the world, including Europe, the Americas, Africa, Australia and south-east Asia, and generates some helpful guidelines for enthusiastic environmental flows policy makers, helping them navigate the difficult transition from policy to implementation.

The first step is recognising the need for environmental flows, and doing the science and community engagement in local catchments to identify what the environmental flows should be, in order to protect the ecosystems and assets valued by that community. This is not a trivial step, but there are a number of well-documented processes that can be used in different water management regimes to get this done.

The next step, which is when I think it gets interesting, from a legal and policy perspective, is when the recommended flows are identified, and the responsible organization has to figure out how to deliver them. This can happen in three types of situation: (1) full allocation of water rights in the catchment, and existing rights or historical use patterns are being respected; (2) full allocation, but all rights to water are being renegotiated as part of setting the environmental flows; or (3) something less than full allocation, so that more water can be set aside for the environment without affecting existing users (if any).

Clearly, it’s easiest to implement environmental flows under scenario 3, and they become a constraint on future uses of water in the catchment. This can also represent the best outcome for the ecological health of the river, as it’s more likely to be maintained from the outset (rather than being clawed back from a state of degradation later).

Scenario 2 is possibly the most challenging, as everything is up for grabs. I think one of the best examples of scenario 2 is the water reform still underway in South Africa. Following constitutional reform in 1994, South Africa committed to major water reform. The 1998 National Water Act legally set aside water for basic human needs and an ecological reserve (flows to protect the ecological health of the water systems), which must be met before economic uses of water. Whilst this legal reform was a world first, and created a model for defining environmental water that has inspired other jurisdictions (including Australia), implementation has lagged well behind the law. There are many reasons for this, and I suspect one important reason might be that negotiating everything takes a long time, especially when there are historical uses of water for economic purposes. Even if these historical uses are legally downgraded, the former owners won’t want to give them up for nothing.

Scenario 1 is happening now, in many developed and developing countries. Scenario 1 happens after many years of water extraction, when communities and governments recognise the need for environmental flows to protect the health of rivers and wetlands. Enabling the environment to legally use water is the first step – but when all the water has been allocated to others, how do you give any to the environment? There are some great examples from the western USA and in the Murray-Darling Basin of Australia, where water has been recovered using a combination of purchase of water entitlements from existing users, and investment in water savings (through efficiency measures, or alternative water uses). In Australia, the environment is now one of the largest single holders of water entitlements, and the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder has large volumes in many catchments throughout the Murray-Darling Basin.

The final step in this transition is to management, and this step is the most recent. Where environmental flows policy programs have been successful, environmental water managers are now facing the task of managing this additional water. In some places, this water is only held as instream flows or rules-based water, requiring little to no management. But where environmental water entitlements are held in storage, and can be called out to extend or top-up natural flooding events, or keep wetlands alive during severe drought, management is essential. Environmental water managers now need to demonstrate that they are using this water effectively to deliver real, measurable, on-ground improvements in river health.

This transition from ‘more is better’ to effective management of the environmental water available is enabled by large volumes of environmental water. In most cases, there is still not enough water to restore complete health to the river in question, but the water hasn’t come for free, and there is often ongoing competition between private uses (such as urban water supply, irrigation and mining) and environmental uses of that water. In the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia, we are coming to the end of the current water recovery phase, with the release of the new Murray-Darling Basin Plan. The challenge of taking a management approach to this new, massive portfolio of water entitlements is driving a raft of changes in the environmental water management industry, and the organisations responsible for managing the water. 

Welcome to the blog!

Environmental water management is changing. Driven by factors like climate change, drought, flood and increasing awareness of the plight of threatened species that depend on healthy rivers and wetlands, around the world, policy programs to restore environmental flows have proliferated. In some places, we are investing huge sums of money in recovering water for the environment. For example, in the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia, the Commonwealth Government is investing AUD3.1 billion in water purchase, as well as another AUD5.8 billion in efficiency projects, which will also increase water availability. Under the newly released Murray-Darling Basin Plan, this will deliver 2750GL of environmental water (with another 450GL to follow).  Whilst this is the biggest program of its kind in Australia, state governments have also been investing large sums in environmental water recovery. This sort of investment is also taking place in the western states of the USA, where a range of government and not-for-profit environmental water organizations work with irrigators to restore instream flows.

In some ways, we've got more environmental water than we've ever had, since extractions reached their modern levels. Whilst recovery is still important, in many places, the emphasis is switching to the importance of managing the recovered water. Environmental water managers have to show their investors (taxpayers, or donors to private organizations) that they can get 'bang for buck' with their water. In some places, this is as simple as protecting the improved instream flows (not actually all that simple in practice!). In others, it can include making use of the opportunities and increased flexibility offered by active water markets, to move water around geographically, and convert water into money that can be invested in alternative methods to improve the health of aquatic habitat.

With more water, and more active management required, the role of environmental water managers, and the process of environmental water governance, has never been more important. How can environmental water be managed effectively, and efficiently? How can environmental water managers ensure they have sufficient flexibility to manage changing water needs, especially in a climate change future when extreme weather events might be more frequent? How should environmental water managers retain some independence from the politics of the government of the day, yet remain responsible to the public for managing a public resource?

It's never been a more exciting time to be an environmental water manager, or to be researching those who are. This blog will consider all these questions, and more, and will hopefully also include some guest authors who know far more about the activities of their own organizations than I do.