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World Environment Day is a day that draws attention to our natural world, so it makes sense that on this day we focus on the natural world and the threats it faces.
It probably sounds counterintuitive, but perhaps on World Environment Day, we should be focusing more on people. It stands to reason after all, that if people are the problem they are also central to the solution.

The recently formed Lower Balonne Working Group has made a submission to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan Review, reflecting progress in an area of historic deadlock between water users in the region.

Water sharing plans are a classic area of policy deadlock. Watertrust Australia’s work into fairness, which we are currently refining and testing with water policy practitioners, could provide new processes for decision makers to genuinely engage with stakeholders in this often-vexed area.

In the contested world of water policy, disagreements are likely. But with transparent, inclusive and well-reasoned deliberation in place, deadlock and impasse does not have to be inevitable. Watertrust Australia’s submission to the Murray Darling Basin Plan Review makes the case to embed processes like these into the Basin Plan.

This month in Adelaide, Peter Cullen Trust fellows and friends took a day to get immersive with the concept of fairness and how to apply it in water policy discussions. The workshop was an opportunity for Watertrust Australia to share its work on fairness to see how it lands with a group of experienced practitioners.

A few weeks ago, I joined a One Basin CRC panel that focused on empowering local communities, as part of a broader conversation around the review of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

What encouraged me about the panel was the clear and genuine appetite for approaches where locals and local knowledge have a stronger place in shaping the outcomes that affect them.