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.

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.

Two new reports from Watertrust Australia are challenging policymakers to rethink water governance by placing fairness, equity, and justice at the heart of decision-making.

These reports are part of Watertrust’s wider Equity, Fairness, and Justice initiative, which aims to reshape how water policy decisions are made in Australia.

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.