Balancing Consumptive and Environmental Water Use –An Australian Perspective - Water and Agriculture: Sustainability, Markets and Policies - page 180

While achieving identified environmental outcomes remains the objective of
investments under the Trust, the associated benefits include skilled resource managers,
communities playing a key role in their future direction, improved productivity and
profitability, enhanced protection and restoration of biodiversity, and more people taking
an active role in improving the management of natural resources, including those who are
not directly involved in land and water management activities.
Since the inception of these programmes in 2000-01, governments have jointly
approved National Action Plan and Trust investments totalling AUD 352 million. The
great majority of National Action Plan funding, and around half of the Trust funding, are
being invested to pursue targets and priorities developed by regional communities and
articulated in plans accredited by governments (Natural Resource Management
Ministerial Council, 2005). The National Action Plan and the Natural Heritage Trust are
prime examples of the Australian Government and state and territory governments
implementing co-ordinated, strategic and national approaches to Australia's
environmental issues.
The subsequent sections present two case studies on the Murray-Darling Basin and
the Great Barrier Reef Catchment to illustrate some of the specifics of the innovative and
co-operative approaches Australia has taken to engage stakeholders in solving
environmental problems.
5. Case Study 1: The Murray-Darling Basin
The Murray-Darling Basin (Basin) is the catchment for the Murray and Darling
Rivers and their many tributaries. Extending across one-seventh of the continent, it
contains more than 20 major rivers as well as important groundwater systems (Figure 2).
Spanning four states and one territory, from north Queensland to South Australia and
including three quarters of New South Wales and half of Victoria, it is the heartland and
the economic powerhouse of rural Australia. It has a population of nearly 2 million
people, with another million people outside the region depending heavily upon its
resources. The Basin generates about 40 per cent of the national income derived from
agriculture and grazing. It supports one quarter of the nation's cattle herd, half of the
sheep flock, half of the cropland and almost three-quarters of its irrigated land. It is also
an important source of freshwater for domestic consumption, agricultural production and
industry (MDBC, 2005b).
Many of the Basin's natural resources are of high environmental value. A number of
the Basin's 30,000 wetlands are recognised under the Convention on Wetlands of
International Importance. For fish and other riverine life forms, the Basin is a vast
interconnected network, stretching from the saline lakes of the Coorong estuary in South
Australia, east to the alpine streams of the Snowy Mountains and north to the semi-arid
and tableland streams of southern Queensland. As a large, very shallow drainage basin
with only one exit flowing out of Lake Alexandrina in South Australia, the Basin is an
unusually complex biophysical system.
In the last 100 years life in the Basin has been transformed by the construction of
major water storages on the rivers. The total volume of water storage capacity in the
Basin is just below 35,000 GL (MDBC, 2005d). However, the development that made the
economic productivity of the Basin possible has also caused much biophysical
degradation. The operation of the storages and the extraction of large volumes of water