Balancing Consumptive and Environmental Water Use –An Australian Perspective - Water and Agriculture: Sustainability, Markets and Policies - page 184

Controlling land degradation and protecting important terrestrial ecosystems, productive
farm land, cultural heritage and built infrastructure; and

Maximise net benefits from salinity control across the Basin.

Table 1. Actions under the Murray-Darling Basin Initiative

Region Issue Action/ Project Description

Basin-wide Sustainable

communities

Integrated Catchment
Management Framework
2001-2010

Document outlines an approach to ICM
that is based on targets for catchment
health and progressive evolution of the
way communities, institutions and
governments are organised to meet the
challenges and opportunities of the future.

Communicating
with natural
resource
management
partners

Towards Whole of
Community Engagement -
a Practical Toolkit

Toolkit is designed to help Murray-Darling
Basin stakeholders develop better
processes to engage communities in
natural resource management processes
in the Basin.

Dryland Salinity Implementation of the

Basin Salinity Management
Strategy

Strategy guides communities and
governments in co-operation to control
salinity in the Basin and protect key natural
resource values within their catchments. It
establishes targets for the river salinity of
each major tributary valley and the Murray-
Darling system itself.

Rivers and
wetlands

Competing
demands for
water

Review of the Operation of
“the Cap” (water diversions
from rivers)

A limit imposed on the volume of water
which could be diverted from the rivers for
consumptive uses.

River regulation
and forests

Development of a water
management strategy for
the Barmah-Millewa
Forests

Recognises the forest as a single
ecosystem by recognising appropriate
economic, environmental and social
factors and by adapting to knowledge
advancements.

Declining native
fish

Murray-Darling Basin Fish
Management programme
Native Fish Strategy 2003-
2013

To rehabilitate native fish communities
back to 60 per cent of their estimated pre-
European settlement levels after 50 years
of implementation through key actions
ranging from restoring fish passage to
environmental flows and rehabilitation of
river reaches.

Irrigated
regions

Salinity Implementation of the

Basin Salinity Management
Strategy

Discussed in Dryland Region