Equity, Fairness and Justice - a foundation

Equity, fairness and justice.

Three essential words that underline how we live our lives; expecting or even demanding they provide a baseline to our interactions within society and the wider world.

But what if the definitions of those terms are unclear or disputed? Far from being locked down in dictionary definitions, most of our understanding of what those three words mean are strongly shaped by our broader world views. For policy makers who have responsibility for providing equitable and fair outcomes, the dilemma becomes how to craft policy that is considered “fair” by stakeholders with dramatically different ideas about exactly what a fair outcome might be, in a contested situation. How do we move forward, if your fundamental idea of what you would consider fair is starkly different to mine?

Globally, there is a rising movement to explore this issue, particularly with regards to ensuring intergenerational wealth and resources are distributed fairly. Organisations such as the School of International Futures and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are among those developing materials examining these issues, including explorations of policy-making that fosters intergenerational justice.

In Australia’s deeply contested water policy space, Watertrust is driving a major initiative on equity, fairness and justice, that will be revealed through 2025. The initiative will produce a foundational policy guidelines paper developed in consultation with policymakers and stakeholders, underpinned by five major pieces of research.

“This is about broader democratic accountability and legitimacy in policy,” said Watertrust’s former Director of Strategy and Programs and long-time supporter, Rod Marsh. “Competent decisions are not enough; what’s essential for policy to be effective is that policy makers make decisions that are seen as legitimate by stakeholders. Legitimate policy is broadly understood as being ‘fair enough’ and this includes how the decision was made as much as the final decision itself.”

With only so much freshwater to go around on this, the driest inhabited continent on the planet, and with climate change anticipated to make things worse, the question of how precious water is distributed between the many often opposed stakeholders, from farmers to First Nations to local communities to environmentalists, miners or irrigators and more, is fraught for government policy-framers and water authorities. Developing and implementing water policy with explicit consideration of the different perspectives of equity, fairness and justice offers the opportunity to reach workable agreements on policies that can be implemented to deliver common good outcomes for Australia.

Led by Watertrust’s Kane Aldridge and Rod Marsh, the Equity Initiative is designed to build the most complete understanding yet of how the many stakeholders in the water sector regard “equity”, “justice” and “fairness” in policy creation and delivery. Our work asks some deeply philosophical questions but also drills down to real-world, applicable uses aiming to tangibly create policy more widely regarded as fair enough.

An early component of the initiative has been to work with researchers from the University of Melbourne led by A/Prof. Rebecca Nelson to examine legal definitions of equity, fairness and justice in state, territory and Commonwealth water law. We found that ideas about fairness are present in many areas of water law from water entitlements and planning, interstate water sharing, catchment management, water services and pricing, environmental protection, land use and development, and climate change. We found ideas about equity and fairness underpinning legislation even when the laws don’t directly say that’s what they are about.

However, we also found the concepts are not used consistently and in many cases definitions of “equity” were vague or non-existent. This provides for significant administrative discretion, allowing plenty of room for world view framing. It also makes it tough for courts to rule on equity and fairness in water decision making.

“We need clear policies and open communication about decisions involving fairness, so the public can understand and scrutinise what are often value-based choices,” said Rebecca Nelson. “We can learn a lot from other countries where these ideas are further developed.”

As always, in doing this work, Watertrust Australia acts as a truly independent entity, making no judgements or siding with stakeholder groups. We exist to allow stakeholders to hear one another, to listen, to consider the language being used and how each group’s understanding may differ of what equity, justice and fairness mean. Then we bring that research to government policymakers.

The research of the equity, fairness and justice initiative will be used as a basis for a national policy guidelines paper for government. The research to-date has included the legal analysis; a review focused on how stakeholders frame equity, fairness and justice submissions to public inquiries; a review of literature to establish the existing knowledge base; a major survey of water stakeholders to establish the full gamut of potential viewpoints; and finally a population-scale survey to get a robust understanding of how ideas about fairness shape people’s views on how water should be managed.

Even in the initial phase, participants in the work have stressed its importance as tangible and necessary, offering a genuinely useful toolkit for building legitimate policy based on a shared understanding of the different perspectives of equity, fairness and justice in current and future policy negotiations.

Watertrust’s report into Water, Law and Concepts of Equity is now available via the link below. We will be releasing more findings from our deep dives into the equity space in the coming months, as we lead up to our overall policy paper.