Murray Cod in the Murrumbidgee

This is a great little video released by the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage, showing how environmental flows have been used in the Murrumbidgee River (part of the Murray-Darling Basin) to help support and maintain populations of the Murray Cod, Australia's best-known freshwater fish.

For any international readers that I've introduced to the Murray Cod previously - I wasn't kidding! They really are that big, and they live for up to 80 years. 

Thanks to the Australian River Restoration Centre for the share. 

Flood risk management and Jane Austen: all part of a day out in Edinburgh

One of the serendipitous delights of this visit to the UK is the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The city is almost overwhelmed with visitors from all over the world, flocking through the streets in search of the fun and frivolity of the Fringe.

It can also be a bit much. The main streets and places like the Royal Mile are all but immovable, and the tourists (yes, that’s me too, I know) have taken over. I’m pretty sure that you’re not really supposed to pet police horses, for example, but the pair I observed yesterday were taking it all very patiently. Does it count as bribing a police officer if you’re making friends with his horse?

Luckily, I had the insights of an almost-local. Vanessa Collins lives just over the border in Newcastle and she braved the slightly dysfunctional rail network on Thursday morning to pop over for some brunch, a chat about water resource management and a viewing of Austentatious.

I think Edinburgh forgot it was still summer, and I woke up to mist snuggled up around the castle and the Scott monument. The Georgian terraces were equal parts obscured by mist and road works (apparently one must not mention the tram works. At all.), but the brunch was excellent (if you’re after something tasty and inexpensive, try Cafe Milk).

Vanessa is working for the Environment Agency, an extraordinarily large public agency in the UK responsible for sustainable development and environmental management, including water licensing and flood risk management. Apparently there are over 10,000 staff in the agency, working all over England. 

Vanessa is a civil engineer working as a project manager in the flood risk management area. England is trying to find ways to reduce flood risks to lower catchment towns, using a range of engineering solutions, including building bigger flood walls in towns, and finding ways to store more water in the upper catchment. What I find most interesting about this issue is that climate change is likely to make floods more frequent, and more extreme, but probably less predictable. So how do you invest in the flood mitigation measures, knowing that you’ll really need them at some future point, but until then, they aren’t really useful at all? Even more challenging: how do you hold space in a water storage to retain flood waters when storage levels are dropping? The corollary of increased flooding under climate change is that periods of low flow and drought are also likely to be more frequent. From what I can tell, this is less of a problem here in England than it is in Australia, for example, but it wasn’t so long ago that parts of England were drought stricken. Managing uncertainty and variability requires a new mindset, and it’s one that sits uncomfortably alongside accounting measures of capital investment. I think there’s going to be some interesting learning curves as our understanding of the new hydrology of many of our river systems develops over time.

I’m reminded of the work of Chris Spray at the University of Dundee in the Eddleston catchment, where upstream storage mechanisms are being enhanced using a combination of engineering solutions and ecosystem services like re-inserting meanders in the river, building wetlands and revegetating upper catchments. Researchers at the University of Newcastle are also working with the Environment Agency on a range of catchment management approaches to mitigate flooding in Belford (check out this and this).

None of these activities are cost free, and they all impose a trade-off between what you can use the water, space and money for now, as opposed to what you might need to use it for in the next flood. We don’t know when that will be, but we do know it will happen.

After all that, it seemed only logical to weave our way through Edinburgh’s mist-shrouded streets and parks, claim a space in the queue, and enjoy the hilarity of Austentatious. Improv comedy in the style of Jane Austen: who could ask for more?

Re-embedding economic relationships within the social context: what does this mean for environmental water trading?

When we use the market to facilitate the acquisition and management of environmental water, how much are we giving up to market norms? Are we redefining the environment in the context of the water market, and if so, what does that mean?

This tension between the drive to protect the environment, and the methods we can use to achieve this protection, is emerging as one of the critical issues for my research. I’m interested in what happens to legal and policy definitions and perceptions of the natural environment when it is clothed in a corporate form, given tradeable water assets and the legal and institutional capacity to operate within the water market and the water supply systems as just another user. In Australia, our environmental water holders are using the market to acquire and manage their water portfolios. I think there’s some evidence that this is changing the way that the environment itself is seen (and which I’ll explore another time), and it connects broadly to the behavioural economics research into the way that market norms can overwhelm and irreversibly replace social norms of interaction.

But is this tension always apparent? Is there a way of reconceptualising the market so that it operates within a social context? Can we use the market to strengthen social values around the environment, so that social norms are actually enhanced as a result of environmental water trading? I think this may be what is happening in the western USA, where environmental water trusts require a social relationship with the local community. Unless other water users can see that there is a win-win, then there is no support for trading water to the environment. In this context, the activities of the environmental water trusts are actually enhancing the understanding and support for environmental protection, in a non-confrontational way.

I’ve been searching for an analytical tool that can help me to understand the differences I can see in the way that environmental water is being managed in the US and Australia. On Wednesday, I was lucky enough to meet with Dr Bettina Lange, a specialist in socio-legal theories of regulation at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University. She shared her insights into the way that markets can be seen as embedded within a social context. She edited a special issue of the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly in 2011, which drew on the work of Karl Polanyi to discuss the way that capitalism can disembed the market from its social context, and whether there can be a corresponding ‘counter-movement’ to re-embed the market within social norms.

Bettina generously helped me to understand this approach, and the opportunities it offers to understand the shifting relationship between market norms and social norms. It’s early days, but I feel like this could be a watershed moment in the development of my thinking.

(And apologies for the pun. It’s just not possible to talk about water resource management without punning from time to time.)

Water markets, ecosystem services, corporatisation and the role of NGOs in catchment management: perspectives from the University of Dundee’s IHP-HELP Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science

Thanks to the generosity of the British Council, I'm continuing my exciting adventure around the UK.

The University of Dundee’s IHP-HELP Centre for Water Law,Policy and Science is recognised as an international centre of excellence in water law and policy. I’ve been lucky enough to spend the last two days meeting with and speaking to academics from this centre and other parts of the University. I’m beyond grateful for the time these generous people made available to me; and I’m particularly grateful to Dr Sarah Hendry, who helped to arrange my visit and encouraged her colleagues to attend my presentation.

My first meeting with with Professor Chris Spray, who shared his insights into the role of the Tweed Forum, a non-government organization acting as an intermediary between local communities and government to implement environmental projects. Tweed Forum has been around since 1991, and is now a model for participatory catchment organizations around the world. I was fascinated to learn about this organization and the role it plays in connecting government to communities, and the trust it has built through its ongoing relationship with both. It reminded me of some of the environmental water trusts in the western USA, which help bring together government and individual water users and ranchers to deliver win-win environmental outcomes. I'm very interested to see whether this is a model we could explore in Australia, in addition to our government catchment management authorities.

Next, I met with Dr Sarah Hendry, who has a deep background in the legal and organizational structures for the industry in the UK. Sarah patiently answered my questions and helped me understand the historical differences that have underpinned the different policy approaches taken by Scotland, England and Wales, and the different legal forms used to manage water in each jurisdiction. I'm particularly interested in whether there's any evidence of a statutory corporation, or a state-owned corporation, demonstrating the attributes we associate with a privately owned, for-profit corporation (a corporation limited by shares). Can we use the corporate model in a state-owned capacity to obtain a commercial operating environment without losing control of the public services it's providing? Are there essential attributes of the corporate form that are common to all it's iterations, inescapable features of using this particular legal structure? 

As is often the case, I also met up with some fellow Australians. Dr Francine Rochford and I had some fascinating discussions around the nature of property rights in Australian water, how to engage with different water user groups and the nature of the public/private divide. Dr Michelle Lim, another Australian, is here in Scotland working on a project to examine the way that ecosystem services can act to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh. 

On Tuesday afternoon, I gave a seminar to about 15 highly engaged audience members. My presentation focused on my work on examining the way that environmental water organizations are emerging to manage environmental water in the context of water markets, and to use this as a tool to explore the tension between the need to extend environmental protection into the ‘everyday’ and the potential loss of the social norms that drive the need for that protection in the first place. Using markets to manage the natural environment runs the risk of replacing social norms (which stipulate for environmental protection) with market-based norms, which can put a price on the environment and perhaps weaken or erode the social norms. This topic is central to my thesis (and definitely worth a blog post of its own) so I’ll probably leave it at that for the moment – but more to come! If anyone is interested in seeing a copy of this presentation, please leave a request in the comments and I can email you. 

I really enjoyed this opportunity to speak with this audience. They were very interested and kept me on my toes with lots of intelligent questions during the presentation, and a broad discussion of both the content and my research directions afterwards. This presentation was tremendously helpful for me, as it gave me a chance to test some of my new ideas with an international audience, and to lift the level of discussion beyond the detail of Australian environmental water management. 

Following the seminar, I had a brief but interesting discussion with Professor Colin Reid about markets in biodiversity. Market-based tools can be highly effective, but one of the big limits for natural resources like biodiversity is that they are context specific - timing, location and scale are all important factors in defining the 'product', which can make finding appropriate trade-offs challenging. 

PhD students and staff who kindly invited me to lunch

I also managed to inspire some interest in Australian water law and policy more generally. Andrew Allan and I spent the afternoon discussing Australia's legal construction of water rights, water allocation policies and how the environment is operating within Australia's water markets. 

It was a fascinating two days. I'm only sorry that it was such a short visit, and I can't possibly do justice to the fantastic conversations in this blog. Thank you to everyone who spent time with me!

Climate change and water law: my chance to get a UK perspective

Today’s blog post is brought to you all courtesy of the British Council – a non-political organisation working to build mutually beneficial and lasting relationships between the future leaders of the UK and over 100 countries worldwide.  

Thanks to their generous funding arrangement through my home university (University of Melbourne Law School), I’m heading to the UK tomorrow, where I’ll be meeting with academics and policy makers in water resource management.

The prospect of future climate change and the increasing variability and frequency of extreme weather events is forcing water resource managers everywhere to embrace new methods of managing water that enhance flexibility and responsiveness to changing environmental conditions. Both Australia and the UK have experienced severe drought and flood over the past decade, and in both countries, this is inspiring change and reform in water resource management.

The UK and Australia have a combination of some common experiences, along with differences in water law and hydrology, which provides an excellent opportunity to examine how water reform can play out in different circumstances. Australia and the UK have a history of sharing information and working together on policy issues, including water management, and I hope to build on this relationship (for a recent example, check out Professor Mike Young’s report for University College London’s Environment Institute).

English water law was the basis for early Australian water law, as the riparian rights regime was imported to Australia during colonization. In both cases, the original common law water rights have been overlaid by more recent statutory water rights. Following the release of the Water White Paper in 2011, the UK is looking to improve its statutory regime, leading to more flexible, responsive, environmentally sustainable and tradeable water licenses, and in particular, how to stimulate a water market, for retail, industry and agricultural water users. There are many points of similarity between the reforms the UK is currently experiencing, and those pursued in Australia as part of the National Water Initiative, including a need for change to ensure water use remains sustainable in a climate change world.

One of the big questions for such reform is: where does the environment fit when water markets are created? I'm looking forward to providing an Australian perspective on how the environment can be protected and managed within a water market, and the trade-offs that come with this approach. In addition, I hope to learn from the UK water resource managers how the environment can be managed and protected in systems that are not yet fully-allocated, and where riparian rights (rather than a full extractive rights regime) still have a role in water resource management. In particular, the Water Framework Directive requires focus on both quantity and quality. In Australia, the emphasis for environmental water managers has been almost solely on quantity of water, so there is much to learn about effective and efficient management of water quality for the aquatic environment.

The UK’s leadership in regulating privatization of its corporate water managers is also an area I am keen to explore. In Australia, corporatization has been used as a means to improve efficiency of operations, without proceeding to full privatization of water resource managers (which is often prohibited under state constitutions). Successful implementation often depends heavily on the power and capacity of the regulators. Corporatization is an ongoing process in Australia, and it is a very recent phenomenon for environmental water managers to use the corporate form. I’m really looking forward to discussing this with water corporatization specialists in the UK, such as Dr Sarah Hendry at the University of Dundee.

So, tomorrow I’m off to the UK. I’m heading to the University of Dundee first, then Edinburgh, back to London, where I’ll be visiting DEFRA and the Centre for Water and Development at SOAS London, and then out to the University of East Anglia. To finish up, I’ll be speaking at the Water and Society conference in New Forest in the first week of September. I promise to keep up a much more regular posting schedule this trip, so there’ll be more to come soon!