The governance of hydrosocial risk in peri-urban South Australia
Abstract
Climate change is generating levels of environmental risk that are jeopardising modern development. As the management of water systems becomes more difficult, approaches to governance and engagement within regions are increasingly shaping adaptation successes and failures. We use theory on hydrosocial systems and risk to critically analyse stakeholder experiences of a transition in South Australian water management in peri-urban Adelaide, with detail from the Langhorne Creek viticultural region. Local prescription of water resources has limited over-exploitation and supported landowners to use water in sophisticated ways. When community stakeholders deliberated on common concerns with governance organisations for mutually beneficial outcomes, decision-making supported successful hydrosocial adaptation. Ongoing challenges, such as a lack of confidence in the scientific knowledge guiding decisions, were accentuated when the process was politicised and engagement became inauthentic. If trust between governance organisations and local stakeholders is broken, it is difficult to re-engage the farming community with adaptation decision-making. In contrast, by working closely with community end-users, government can enable appropriate behaviour and guide adaptive management. Attention to hydrosocial processes will be crucial to facilitate effective local adaptation policy in response to climate risk.
Key Insights
Water management systems must account for complex hydrosocial issues to manage risk. Governance of hydrosocial risk will be problematic if stakeholders do not acknowledge how authentic engagement is important and leads to community understanding of local situations and the need for adaptation policy to manage change. Community acceptance of restrictions in resource allocation can be facilitated by the mutual development of knowledge, including the incorporation of future resource projections into knowledge systems, in association with local monitoring. However, if trust between governance organisations and local stakeholders is weakened, it is difficult to re-engage farming communities to support effective adaptation decision-making.
1 INTRODUCTION
Hydrosocial risk is reshaping how socio-ecosystems are organised. Climate change is now challenging sustainable water management across the globe (Gleick, 2018; Rosenzweig et al., 2004; Van Dijk et al., 2024). Some regions are water rich but rising demand from downstream users is evident alongside increased risks of flooding. Other regions are water poor and more extensive droughts and depleted resources may threaten to undermine socio-ecosystems. A third category sits in between these climatic extremes, where regions have been managing a limited resource for an extended period but are now experiencing new forms of hydrosocial risk associated with increasing rainfall variability, declining resource availability, and rising conflict between water users. The last group concerns us here, in relation to South Australia (SA) where there has been need to reconceptualise water resources as highly constrained and transition management systems in response to new thresholds in resource use and increasing climatic risk (Mercer et al., 2007; Phogat et al., 2018). We examine how water management has been transformed to respond to climate change risk and over-exploitation in the relatively humid region adjacent to the state capital, Adelaide, with local detail from the Langhorne Creek grape and wine production region in the lower Murray-Darling Basin (MDB). In doing so, we ask how local hydrosocial systems enabled peri-urban water users in SA to become relatively successful in adapting to risk and what lessons are there for future water management.
A lack of understanding of the socio-cultural and governance processes underpinning policy complexity hinders opportunities for effective adaptation to changing local water resource conditions. Much early research dealing with challenges of water management in a changing climate has focused on developing technical or economic solutions, while neglecting to fully conceptualise or respond to important social elements (Johnston et al., 2012; Mosse, 2003; OECD, 2010). Yet, over the last decade, many researchers and decision-makers have realised that socially patterned opinions and behaviours are key to framing conceptions of risk management in natural resource organisations (Baudoin & Arenas, 2020; Hahn et al., 2006). Farmer and other stakeholder perceptions and actions are fundamental to the long-term sustainability of water management regimes. Any failure to normalise climate change in the context of local values, plans, and actions could undermine sustainability in areas where farmers construct agricultural systems around their perceptions of water—its abundance, quality, reliability, ownership, and risks—and change their behaviours and technologies in association (Brown, 2008; Rauken et al., 2015; Ross, 2018).
In Australia, the need for the integration of climate change into plans and operational procedures became clear during the “Millennium Drought” that affected south-eastern Australia from the late 1990s to 2010. The conceptual transition away from considering climate change risk as something abnormal to natural resource systems was driven by the extensive impact the drought had on water management (Alexandra & Rickards, 2021; Greenwood, 2013; Wheeler & Marning, 2019), including the focus region of peri-urban Adelaide (Houston & Bardsley, 2018; Lereboullet et al., 2013; Linton & Budds, 2014; McKay, 2002). Even though water planning is a theme of much research and governance, there is a lack of understanding of why some places and communities have been able to respond to climatic risk within their water management systems, while others continue to struggle (Cooper et al., 2018; Orlove & Caton, 2010). We aim to critically analyse the hydrosocial processes that enabled farming communities in SA to become relatively accepting of the policy transition that constrained water access to identify lessons from the local approach to managing risk.
2 ENVIRONMENTAL RISK AND HYDROSOCIAL ADAPTATION
Many of the challenges of adapting water systems to a climatic risk involve complex decisions, social adjustments, and governance arrangements that are sufficiently prescriptive to constrain use, but necessarily flexible to allow for application by a range of end users (Grafton et al., 2019; Pahl-Wostl, 2019). For that reason, we align theory on societal risk with key elements of hydrosocial theory to examine the implications of water resource policy within peri-urban Adelaide. The two theories are introduced initially before being used to frame the analysis of stakeholder perceptions from semi-structured interviews with water governance professionals and regional farmers.
Climate change is generating levels of water risk that jeopardise modern development (IPCC, 2022). Related examples of hydro-social risk extend from ocean warming, acidification and sea-level rise, via glacial and snowpack melting, to storm and flood risk, through to the focus of this article, constraints to water resource availability (Boelens et al., 2016; Swyngedouw, 2009; Yang et al., 2021). A hydro-social framing of those issues highlights that impacts are not just physical, but are shaped by socio-cultural practices such as values, governance, and community engagement, while also serving to scaffold understanding of water infrastructure, attitudes to risk and opportunities, and social relations (Muccione et al., 2024; Quimby et al., 2023). As Linton and Budds (2014, p.170) have noted, “water management is not merely a technical field that can be addressed through infrastructure provision and scientific expertise, but a political one that involves human values, behavior and organization.”
As agricultural systems are being forced to transform in reaction to climate change – both directly in response to changing resource conditions and indirectly in response to changing community demands – policy settings are also adjusting to enable adaptation. Yet, hydrosocial processes vary considerably in their ability to facilitate effective adaptation for sustainable outcomes (Adger et al., 2005; Lausier & Jain, 2019; Moss et al., 2009; Piggott-McKellar et al., 2019). Research that investigates hydrosocial responses to climate change promises to broaden the scope of adaptation planning by demonstrating how social and ecological systems can coevolve to promote sustainable water management (Falkenmark & Folke, 2002; Mills-Novoa et al., 2017). Changes to future risk cannot simply sit beside normal planning and action, rather risk must form a key component of the dialectic of hydrosocial processes — adjusting how governance and engagement between stakeholders and their resource is undertaken and sustained. Many management responses still consider social elements of hydrological risk as something largely exterior to normal systemic processes, or are not adequately accounting for the complexity of cascading or compounding risks, especially when there are long-term implications (Prosser et al., 2021; Simpson et al., 2021). It is for this reason that we explore how water policy reforms in SA have responded to the risks of climate change, drought, and water resource constraints to inform hydrosocial adaptation elsewhere.
Importantly, social scientists have long recognised that cultural understandings of “risk” are not easily translated from objective probabilities to real-world decision-making. Because perceptions of risk are situated within places and systems, they must be “understood and contextualized in social settings” (Boholm, 2003, p.166). This recognition led Beck (1992) to move beyond conceptualisations of risk that consider systems in isolation to urge investigation of “the emerging risk society”, highlighting that all layers of modernity, including places, cultures, management systems, and governance arrangements are transformed by risk, which in turn creates demand for socio-ecosystems that are responsive to new knowledge and drivers of change (Beck, 2010; Lash et al., 1995; Rauken et al., 2015). Societal reactions cannot simply evolve from technical understandings of risk. Instead, they must guide reflexive transformations across society, shaped by iterative learning and community engagement in association with decision-making and application to legitimise responses within specific socio-ecological contexts (Beck et al., 1994; Collins & Ison, 2009; Ensor & Harvey, 2015; Meinke et al., 2006; Plate et al., 2020).
Risk theory can be used explicitly to help to learn from the historical experiences of communities, industries, and systems when confronted by environmental risk (Beck, 1992, 2010; Stuart et al., 2012). Hegel (1956) has highlighted the point that societal development resulted from a constant dialectical tension between theses and antitheses, leading to historical advances that were neither inevitable nor ideal, but resultant from a constant contention of ideas and practice. A new era is emerging however, where humanity is in an existential socio-ecological race to mitigate and adapt to climate change (IPCC, 2022; Steffen et al., 2011), so historical or even contemporary critical dialectical analyses will be insufficient alone to guide effective adaptation to change. Decisions must account for the dramatic repositioning of future socio-ecological risk (Ascough et al., 2008; Pickering & Persson, 2020).
- Fundamental ecological deliberations will need to expand into all risk assessments.
- Contemporary modern productive systems will need to transform to become sustainable.
- The retention and reproduction of complexity relies upon social and ecological diversity.
- Reflexive modern pathways must be specific to place and system.
- Ecological risk must become a core element of knowledge generation and transfer.
The framework highlights that long-term risk must be integrated into management systems and planning, a process that will only be achievable with new knowledge generation, critical decision-making, and renewal of plans and actions based on learning over time. The principles provide a critical framework to guide understanding of the potential for new contradictions driven by ecological risk within management pathways that could undermine systemic resilience (Gleick, 2018; Hochrainer-Stigler et al., 2020). In the discussion that follows, the principles scaffold the analysis of water governance in peri-urban Adelaide to examine how decision-makers account for risk.
3 SOUTH AUSTRALIAN WATER POLICY REFORMS
The Greater Adelaide region (Figure 1) was targeted for settlement by European colonists from the mid-nineteenth century to exploit the relatively reliable rainfall, surface and groundwater resources, and predictable growing conditions of the region’s Mediterranean climate for agricultural development (Bardsley et al., 2018; McKay, 2002; Skinner et al., 2023). Initial irrigation schemes were based on principles of private access to public water, with increasing state control over irrigation water allocations over time to manage finite resources. Although the focus of this paper is on agricultural water use, the fact the region lies adjacent to Adelaide, with a population nearing 1.4 million people, is also important as the growing urban centre is water resource limited (Paton et al., 2013; Pigram, 1986).
The SA Government first introduced water advisory committees to better incorporate local voices into water management with the SA Water Resources Act (1976) (Mitchell et al., 2015a). The subsequent SA Water Catchment Water Management Act (1995) and Water Resource Act (1997) introduced water catchment boards at regional scales, alongside water licensing and levies. Water Allocation Plans (WAPs) were produced for water resources as they were prescribed, generally when the current or potential level of extraction exceeded, or was projected to exceed, a sustainable level (Government of SA, 2009). The WAPs were developed from scientific knowledge and subsequent water modelling of regional hydrology, often in association with local communities (Greenwood, 2013). Water resource proclamation in the Langhorne Creek irrigation district is used as a sub-regional case study because the co-management approach implemented by irrigators and the SA Government via the region’s Angas Bremer Water Management Committee provides an early, innovative template for hydrosocial governance (Howles, 1994; Muller, 2002; Shalsi et al., 2022; Skinner et al., 2023).
The first groundwater prescription in SA was undertaken in Langhorne Creek in 1981 (Figure 1), where excessive groundwater resource use by irrigators growing wine grapes, potatoes, and other crops had depleted the resource, lowering water tables and increasing salinity (Bjørnlund, 1995; Howles, 1994). A 30% cut to licensed groundwater allocation was supported by landowners, driving the use of water sources from groundwater to imported MDB water transported initially through pipelines from Lake Alexandrina, and after the “Millennium Drought”, directly from the River Murray (Figure 1; Muller, 2002; Ross, 2018; Skinner et al., 2024). This approach broadly followed an integrated water resource management (IWRM) framework, defined as “a process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources, in order to maximise the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of a vital ecosystem” (GWPTAC, 2000, p.22). A requirement of IWRM is for stakeholder knowledge to be central to decision-making by increasing involvement and sense of ownership in decisions among local communities (Bischoff-Mattson & Lynch, 2017; Gleick, 2018; Lausier & Jain, 2019; Mitchell et al., 2015b), but it is unclear how much the process accounts for exogenous risks, especially those driven by climate change.
Climate change projections suggest that SA is likely to experience higher temperatures, increased evapotranspiration, reduced annual rainfalls, longer droughts, and more heavy rainfall events (Green & Pannell, 2020). Rainfall is projected to decrease by 5–15% by 2050, but the Millennium Drought has already provided an extreme example of regional water resource availability constraints (Alexandra & Rickards, 2021; Van Dijk et al., 2013). Although drought has subsequently reoccurred across parts of Australia (King et al., 2020), transitional water policy changes since the 2000s were triggered by fears that the extended drought period was indicative of future climate change (Gleick, 2018). The National Water Initiative was established between Australian Federal, State, and Territory Governments in 2004 to respond to the risk, improve governance integration, generate water use efficiencies, and promote sustainable development (Bischoff-Mattson & Lynch, 2017; DCCEEW, 2020). Subsequent reforms have led to governance challenges with ongoing conflict, especially in the MDB, due to constraints in water allocations and increasing water costs (Alston et al., 2016; Baird et al., 2021; Bell & Quiggin, 2008; Grafton & Williams, 2020; Wheeler, 2022). Other regions have been comparatively successful in establishing strong water policy, and we focus on the transition in peri-urban Adelaide to learn from such a region where responses to risk have been largely accepted and even embraced by some irrigators.
National policy triggered changes to state legislation in SA, including the introduction of the SA Natural Resources Management (NRM) Act (2004), which united the SA Water Resource Act (1997), the Soil Conservation and Landcare Act (1989), and the Animal and Plant Control Act (1986) (Government of SA, 2004, 2019). In doing so, it integrated 64 environmental management bodies, including water catchment boards, into eight regional NRM boards. Although some catchment management boards had prescribed water resources previously, these became legislated under the NRM Act (Government of SA, 2004). Water affecting activities listed under the Act1 were regulated and users required a water permit or licence to conduct activities within a prescribed area (Greenwood, 2013). Land and water titles were separated, meaning they could be managed independently. Water licences permitted holders to exploit a specified water resource, while a water allocation specified the quantity of water which may be taken (Government of SA, 2004).
NRM boards became legislated agencies with partial autonomy from State Government, aiming to integrate management through strong collaboration with stakeholders to develop mutual understanding of local environmental demands (Bardsley & Rogers, 2010; Lane et al., 2005; Mitchell et al., 2015b; Prager, 2010). Under the NRM Act, allocations of prescribed water would vary over time with reviews of the regional WAPs. During resource prescription and allocation, the NRM Boards engaged with communities to introduce and explain the scientific information and management approaches, including water access entitlements, levies and markets, and monitoring needs (Lausier & Jain, 2019; Taylor et al., 2013).
Within the Greater Adelaide region, both surface and groundwaters were prescribed, with thousands of licences issued to users (Daniels & Good, 2015; Government of SA, 2011; Howles, 1994). After further state legislative change in 2019 with the Landscape SA Act, natural resources are still managed regionally, with the Hills and Fleurieu Landscape Board governing Langhorne Creek (Figure 1; Government of SA, 2019). We use the dialectical analytical framework introduced above to examine whether the SA model of water governance reform represents an appropriate adaptation response to risk; with the goal of identifying how the hydrosocial system enabled or constrained the resource management approach, and how that learning could inform adaptation initiatives elsewhere.
4 METHOD
To guide our analysis, we undertook surveys from March to December 2021 to examine stakeholder perceptions of the approach to water management in SA at two scales. Participants were purposefully selected for semi-structured interviews based on their knowledge of water management in peri-urban Adelaide in general, and Langhorne Creek in particular. At a regional scale, interviews lasting between 40 and 75 min were conducted with 13 key water governance stakeholders (cited as G1–13), including SA Government, industry representatives, Landscape Board and community actors. Six interviews (cited as LC1–6) were undertaken with vignerons in Langhorne Creek, along with a focus group discussion with five regional water decision-makers (cited as LCFG). Again, most discussions lasted about 1 h, but several longer discussions expanded on key narratives (Bardsley et al., 2018; Drew et al., 2022). While we acknowledge that in-depth discussions with a limited number of key stakeholders generates non-representative data, the ability to draw out complex dialogue on responses to risk generates important insights into systemic change and regional governance narratives (Moskwa et al., 2018; Otto-Banaszak et al., 2011).
A list of open-ended questions guided the discussions of water management processes and outcomes, in a process approved by the University of Adelaide ethics committee (H–2021–101 and H–2021–009). Respondents provided informed consent after provision of a project information sheet. Although not all questions were relevant for all participants, they focused on respondents’ experiences with the governance of historical, contemporary, and future risks to water management systems, especially approaches to community engagement, and the benefits and limitations of the governance approach in relation to social organisation and sustainable resource management. Discussions varied depending on a respondent’s expertise and interests but focused on the history of water management; the reason for and reactions to water resource prescription; the implementation process; community engagement; and the effectiveness of governance arrangements. The interviews in Langhorne Creek enabled a direct examination of local experiences; the reasons for management decisions and their implications; and the social processes that aided or hindered the hydrosocial transition. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and analysed for keyword and thematic repetition to enable the dialectical analysis.
We analysed responses according to the five key risk management principles described by Bardsley and Knierim (2020), to form a Hegelian dialectical critique of the water management reform. By interrogating the interview data multiple times, key quotations and broader narratives warrant arguments regarding the opportunities and challenges of water reform. In what follows, quotations are used extensively to elaborate on the major claims made regarding the hydrosocial governance approach. To provide participants with the freedom to speak openly, all responses are cited anonymously, either as governance (G1–13) or Langhorne Creek respondents (LC1–6 and LCFG).
5 RESULTS
5.1 Fundamental ecological deliberations need to expand into all risk assessments
The main improvement, singular, we have seen has been an awareness of and an incorporation of an ecological lens over the whole process, because it’s always been our job to balance, social, economic, environmental factors. But in the past, it was very heavily loaded to social, economic outcomes, both in terms of our policy and in terms of the politics and expectations. (G4)
There was some disagreement regarding the level of risk incorporated into the WAPs. While considerable time and effort was undertaken for community engagement, people were concerned about the costs they would bear. Some primary producers felt that their basic right to water had been impinged upon. “People were feeling that they had a legitimate expectation to the water they had been accessing and using, which had fell on their land for the past 150 years” (G6). Arguably, such concerns are tied to a perception of the right of the individual to manage their own resources in contrast to the state or community enforcing a recognition of risk: “A few people objected, maybe right at the end of the spectrum, to the prescription of water resources. So, kind of harking back to riparian rights and the rain falling on the land” (G9).
The scheme allowed people to swap their groundwater allocation. It allowed people 10 km from the lake to have access to water … Lake Alexandrina, that is fresh, during the Millennium Drought that receded quite a long way, so people were digging channels to try and chase the water … The lake water went out by four or five hundred meters and the salinity went from not too bad to ‘This will kill seaweed!’ … The pipeline came in from the Murray in 2010, just before it rained! The great majority of water in the region is Murray water now, but the other sources are still pretty important. (LCFG)
The community got together and agreed we had a problem. So, we put together a water committee that ended up being the Angas Bremer Water Committee … We had a large majority that were affected by the problem, that was a big start—you weren’t trying to convince half the community, you’d only have to convince a quarter of the impact. You could see it—it was visual. Production was dropping. Everybody knew we had a problem. And we either walked away and closed down the irrigation like everybody else has, or have a look at what we could do … We got terrific support from the government. It was a combination of strong leadership and the community; the community getting behind the project, well supported by government. (LC1)
Too often analyses of hydrological risk are limited in temporal and systemic scope. Importantly, while prescription aimed to constrain use to current knowledge of sustainable limits, respondents noted that climate change was inadequately accounted for in initial water allocations: “Environmental flow targets were developed based on data that’s now 20-plus years old, and the climates moved a fair bit since then” (G10). The anticipation of climatic risk was a difficult task, both due to a lack of scientific guidance and the political difficulties of constraining contemporary use for future sustainability: “They believed that the water supply was ongoing and sustainable, when clearly the evidence around climate change and everything else had identified that surface flows in the Mount Lofty Ranges are going to potentially reduce by 40% over the next 20, 30 years” (G1).
Two or three hours can ruin a whole year’s work. I don’t remember 40 years ago having the same problems with one hot day ruining an entire grape crop. We always had hot days. Nowadays, 40 degrees (Celsius) is okay, 45 is extreme, and after that—don’t worry about it … You can’t get behind in your irrigating … You need to keep your vines in good condition and hope you get through it. (LCFG)
The responses indicate that regional prescription was a good first step in the mitigation of risks associated with the previous over-allocation of scarce water resources, but many climate change implications remain uncertain.
5.2 Contemporary modern productive systems need to become sustainable
The prescription of resources and associated metering and monitoring drove a transformation in production systems by capping the amount of water for irrigation. Prescription was largely accepted or even desired by some communities such as Langhorne Creek, who had identified local problems with unsustainable rates of extraction (Muller, 2002). In other parts of peri-urban Adelaide, where there were higher groundwater recharge rates and lower rates of extraction, more opposition emerged from landowners: “You’re talking about worldview and philosophical principles of life … it’s quite a valid discussion to have. Where do you find that balancing point between regulation and individual freedom” (G4)?
I think there’s a lot that they could do better, and still could do better, particularly in terms of underpinning the modelling that was used with ongoing monitoring and the opportunity to review and refine the modelling based on you know what’s happening in the real world now that the allocation plan is in place. (G11)
When they first got it (their allocation), they thought, ‘Well, we’ll get nothing’, or ‘We’ll get a drop’, but they actually got something that they felt was something they could work with. If they could guarantee that every year, they thought ‘Well, we can work with that’. So, I think in the end, people were relatively comfortable with what happened with the water allocation. (G8)
The Angas Bremer Group, because it was largely led by community, not by bureaucracy, had a much more on-ground, hands-on approach to the development of that plan … Down here in Langhorne Creek, it’s a completely different attitude. There’s a problem, we get together, work out how we’re going to fix it. And then if we think that we’re going to need a change in policy, or we think the government needs to be engaged, we go to government. Then, when we’ve worked out what the solution is, the community wants to work it through. (LC6)
There was one property that got over 1,000 megalitres. And they only had one bore! … We really needed a watchdog to watch a bit better … Because there were people who, through influence, or power or connections, were able to get water licences, when others couldn’t. And once these things started to get out, that’s when there was quite a division in the area. (LC3)
In summary, when the process lacked direct community involvement, and therefore ownership of the science and modelled outcomes, support for water prescription was limited. This gap could now be offset with more effective monitoring and consistent reporting back to local stakeholders, but several respondents noted that such information is provided only intermittently. Part of the challenge with managing water during the Millennium Drought was the need to manage the immediate crisis, with much of the initial transformation made with inadequate time to guide decisions with solid scientific evidence. In response, the updating of plans based on monitoring data is a vital subsequent step to authenticate assumptions or determine whether more needs to be done.
5.3 Retaining and reproducing complexity relies upon social and ecological diversity
The simplification of systems will often reduce resilience. By providing some water holders in SA with the freedom of choice to use and in many cases trade water, the management approach promoted some individual freedoms that would otherwise have been lost (see also Bjørnlund, 1995; Wheeler, 2022). A key narrative relates to the fact that as a financial price was put on water with prescriptions, licences, and the evolution of water markets, the water resource was increasingly conceptualised as a financial asset to be carefully monitored and managed: “We had to make sure it was properly valued, you can only get values if you put a price on things” (G3). At the same time, farmers were provided with more security of water access: “It’s given people security over the water, like, if you have water that’s allocated to you, you’re relatively comfortable knowing that you have an asset” (G6).
Once they were allowed to convert to lake [licences], it was a tradable situation. And that helped a lot of people through their problems if they were too far from the lake, or wanting to give up, or wanting to cash some of their water in because it was too salty to use anyway. They had an outlet. (LC3)
In the River Murray system for example, there was the water buyback scheme. So, you got a financial reward for returning water for environmental flows. How do you structure a similar sort of reward mechanism, particularly if you’re asking one landholder to wear the brunt for the rest of the catchment? (G11)
The water is probably one of the highest cost waters in Australia, really for an irrigation district. But the ownership of the pipeline, and the way in which it’s structured in which all of those connected to the pipeline are shareholders in the pipeline, works particularly well. It’s underpinned by the legislative framework, and the Irrigation Act that requires low and marginal cost recovery and the likes, out of the National Water initiative principles. (LC6)
To retain complex systems therefore, resources were regulated but liberalised. Yet some important users were not provided with the freedom to trade the resource or missed out on an allocation altogether. For example, there was no specific recognition that water could be allocated to Indigenous people to facilitate alternative socio-ecological uses even though the region was settled in an extended confrontation with the original Indigenous owners (Clarke, 1991; Hemming et al., 2019): “We still haven’t got a situation where the whole idea was that they (Indigenous people) would have a water allocation provided to them that would be used for cultural purposes” (G3). That situation is starting to change around Australia and will be vital to provide the alternative voices to learn how to overcome conceptions of water as detached from the social, which will be key to managing hydrosocial risk (Costanza-van den Belt et al., 2022; Liao & Schmidt, 2023).
5.4 Reflexive modern pathways must be specific to place and system
Respondents noted that the water management transition in SA was only achieved because of the goodwill that the community held towards each other, the process, and at least initially, the government (see also Muller, 2002; Shalsi et al., 2022). The SA Water Resources Act (1997) and the NRM Act (2004) and associated catchment management/NRM Boards allowed for direct input from communities into policy outcomes: “We took a lot of the decision-making away from North Terrace or Victoria Square [in Adelaide] and the bureaucracy” (G13). Yet even though power was initially decentralised, state actors remained heavily involved in supporting communities within their subregions: “There was a lot of consultation and the water allocation planning committee really leant into the process” (G6).
The experience of Langhorne Creek underlines the importance of both internal community relations and strong partnerships between government and stakeholders. All respondents made comments such as: “It’s always a fairly close-knit sort of region and everyone works really well together” (LC2); or “In a community like this, where the majority of them have grown up together, everyone knows each other and kind of respects each other fairly well” (LC4). Those pre-conditions are quite specific to the region, which may make the governance approach appropriate for that particular place but does not necessarily provide answers for places lacking sophisticated intra- and inter-regional relationships, which are difficult to generate without authentic commitment by all actors.
We had a very engaged public service who worked really, really hard … So communities felt a significant amount of trust through the process, but around 2004 to about 2008, the last couple of years, it became really, really hard, because there was a lot of politics that became involved … I think there’s been an erosion of the relationship, as resources have been cut, monitoring has been cut, community participation has been reduced—it rained, and they all went back to Adelaide! And so, I think there has been a straining of the relationship between the regions and the public service in recent times. (LC6)
Political interests began to disrupt water prescription processes, especially when the right-leaning Liberal party used the limitations of the recentralisation of NRM decision-making in their successful campaign for election in 2018: “Politics often clouds, not just the decision-making process, but it also has the ability to cloud people’s views on things, because they’re getting incorrect information” (G3). The more recent replacement of the SA NRM Act with the Landscape SA Act was seen as vital to reinstate more catchment level decision-making: “I think this (the Act) is almost a political response to ‘OK, we need to change this and get back to something that’s a little bit more connected to the regions’” (G11).
Now, you can’t get near government. You’ve got the NRM Board … there’s all this fluff costing us a heap of money as a community; you have all this fluff between government and the community. That’s it in a nutshell! Communities are massively separated from being able to talk directly to government. And you talk through this layer, and then, ‘Oh no, we haven’t got the budget!’ I think we were very privileged. We had the right people, in the right place, at the right time and the right government to listen to us, and probably every one of those components has changed. (LC1)
Even though political interference threatened to diminish opportunities for reflexivity, the policy approach made effective use of both “carrots and sticks” to promote innovation. Incentives for primary producers to accept water prescription included: substantially enhanced water security; environmental protection in light of increasing climatic risks; and the freedom to develop the resource as an asset. On the other hand, regulation generated increased costs, greater bureaucratic oversight, and potential prosecution for noncompliance. That reflexive use of appropriate incentives and regulation supported the exploitation of new approaches and technologies: “I know growers are looking at alternate water sources, such as reclaimed or recycled water, as other opportunities to tap into water for future developments” (G11). In Langhorne Creek, active aquifer recharge has been introduced with the storage of excess allocations within the groundwater system for future use (also Barnett et al., 2000): “That lens is also used for pumping fresh water for storage later in the year, it is called aquifer storage and recharge. The use of that methodology also tends to reduce the salinity” (LCFG). The technology is proving to be an important risk management tool: “The years before a drought happens, we will recharge as much as we can” (LC2). Innovation was also driven through the exploitation of new water-efficient crops to spread opportunities for mitigating risk, which in turn, has promoted the evolution of a range of local development pathways (Song et al., 2022).
5.5 Ecological risk must be core to knowledge generation and transfer
The final principle of critique highlights the importance of community ownership of risk and influence over decision-making. Multi-level governance was established through the NRM Act, by means of NRM boards and community liaison sub-groups and State and Federal Government involvement. Because governance institutions were forced to engage with a range of stakeholders, the original NRM boards were empowered to share knowledge and implement adaptive governance approaches to respond to the crisis. “Community consultation has been an evolving science or art … It was absolutely central to the process, that we would take the time we needed to work with people to get them to understand the status of the water resources within their local area” (G13). Authentic engagement on the need to manage risk facilitated the transformation through knowledge-led change at local scales: “NRM boards” are all led by people from within their communities, who in the end were respected by the communities (G2).
There were some alternative views and important criticisms of the engagement process in other parts of Greater Adelaide. The simple hosting of community consultation events that did not allow time for dialogue or disputes to be resolved were seen as problematic: “I would argue that the government team that was doing it, didn’t really understand how they should engage with the broader community” (G1). Sectors of the community struggled to accept the climate and water resource data that led to specific allocations: “A lot of science goes into how much water we can take from a catchment or a groundwater basin, and that’s pretty difficult science and it’s uncertain science, it’s not precise” (G13).
You couldn’t do what we did then now … Those meetings we were having in the ’80s, they were predominantly local people that have been here for a long time, but the last 20 years, there’s been people in here that you couldn’t probably get to a meeting, you wouldn’t know them. (LC1)
I think the fact that the people in this community, for whatever reason, conducted themselves in a respectful and decent manner, enabled everyone to move forward a lot easier … There’s no way out of this for anyone without all parties working together, from irrigators through our state parliamentarians, through the bureaucracies. (LC3)
The necessity to maintain trust is not just inter-generational or intersectoral, but must also extend spatially. Now, as Langhorne Creek has transferred much of its local agency to guide decisions to the broader regional management institutions governing the MDB, it remains unclear how easy it will be for future adaptation to be applied independently and reflexively.
6 LEARNING FROM HYDROSOCIAL RISK MANAGEMENT
As climate change impacts on the availability and quality of natural resources, the new risk must be incorporated into reflexive policy and plans, which will in turn will alter institutions, actions and technologies (Linton & Budds, 2014). Paths must be found that “overcome organized irresponsibility” (Beck, 2010, p.259). Yet, making major policy reforms is not easy when traditional rights and freedoms are lost, and additional costs and restrictions must be borne by the community. The state of SA has implemented a strong regulatory policy to manage water, but it was most successful when designed and implemented with local communities. There are no simple answers to the complex questions raised by hydrosocial risk. Developing understanding of the dialectical interactions between people and water, as we have here, will be important to guide future transformations within the emerging risk society (Table 1; Lash et al., 1995; Pahl-Wostl, 2019).
| Principle | Positive elements | Negative elements |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Ecological risk assessed |
|
|
| 2. Transformation of the system |
|
|
| 3. Retention of complexity |
|
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| 4. Application of reflexive pathways |
|
|
| 5. Generation of knowledge on risk |
|
|
The SA NRM Act transformed the hydrosocial system by supporting decision-makers to examine surface and groundwater management comprehensively with other environmental and social processes, and there were many successful aspects to the transition as a result (Table 1). When governance arrangements enabled community knowledge to be prioritised, and technical concerns to be integrated with that knowledge, respondents were more likely to become actively involved and feel a sense of ownership of the outcomes (Bardsley & Rogers, 2010; Mitchell et al., 2015a). Examples from Langhorne Creek reveal that strong and complicated decisions could be made through stakeholder engagement with trusted members of governance organisations, who in turn showed commitment to adapting local environmental management to mitigate risk. Such authenticity in state-community relationships may be key to navigating the risk society.
At its best, the decentralisation of decision-making facilitated community engagement and enabled the implementation of local solutions that were flexible enough to account for adaptation needs. The “carrot and stick” framework enabled that cooperation by providing positive incentives of water security and equity, while constraining exploitative actions through the fear of prosecution for inappropriate use. Such a governance approach would appear to work best when communities were advocating for regulatory change, such as in Langhorne Creek, but was less effective when the water management crisis was less palpable to stakeholders. Nevertheless, across the Greater Adelaide region, innovative adaptation responses emerged, with new types of agriculture that use less water replacing comparatively wasteful activities, as well as driving improvements in water-use efficiencies, such as storm- and wastewater harvesting to reduce hydrosocial risk (Bardsley et al., 2018).
Even though IWRM aims for sustainable outcomes, water management remains a fundamental political issue (Boelens et al., 2016; Pahl-Wostl, 2019), with hegemonic hydrosocial processes seen by about half of respondents as negatively affecting the reforms. The NRM Act and regional Board processes initially enabled adaptive governance, with bureaucrats interacting authentically with stakeholders with guidance from central agencies and sharing of knowledge to facilitate sophisticated local planning (Taylor et al., 2013). However, the decentralisation of decision-making also reduced direct state involvement, increasing the management responsibilities of the regions themselves and creating local governance risks in the long-term (Lane et al., 2005). While some respondents appreciated extensive consultation processes, others highlighted the lack of scientific knowledge underpinning decisions and insufficient deliberation on key issues. The recentralisation of power in 2010 hindered multi-level partnerships and diminished community support which, in turn, reduced the effectiveness of governance arrangements (Hahn et al., 2006). In an era of hydrosocial risk, where the accuracy of information will be often be brought into question, recognising the importance of knowledge that is developed via participatory methodologies that are understood and endorsed by all stakeholders will be vital (Huntjens et al., 2012).
It remains difficult to incorporate the long-term risks of climate change into policy, and water resource monitoring will need to be prioritised to ensure that long-term trends guide contemporary decisions. In fact, the complexity brings into question a reliance on highly sophisticated, formulaic attempts at risk assessment, when any change in one element could thwart attempts at accurate analysis of the system. Rather, as Prosser et al. (2021) also note, much current analysis is only a starting point for water management during an era of risk, and sophisticated hydrosocial understandings must continue to develop in association with society as it is transformed by risk.
It was only after the hydrosocial crisis of the Millennium Drought that stronger adaptation methods were forced on all actors, but while the crisis was a useful catalyst (Novalia & Malekpour, 2020), the haste to respond created management problems. While initial WAPs acknowledged that climate change could influence water availability, it is only recently that long-term climate projections have started to be incorporated into resource plans (DEW, 2022; Government of SA, 2009). Importantly, by legislating for participatory knowledge development methods and renewing WAPs systematically over 10-year periods, frameworks were put in place for improvements in adaptive management over time (Daniels & Good, 2015; Houston & Bardsley, 2018). Acceptance of the incorporation of future projections and associated monitoring of ground- and surface water conditions suggests an evolution in hydrosocial understanding of risk within governance organisations and the community, but also highlights ongoing constraints to the co-evolution of social and water management.
7 CONCLUSION
Analyses of stakeholder perceptions of risk and systemic change are an important tool for reviewing management approaches aiming to guide adaptation to hydrosocial risk. Much risk continues to be conceptualised as being driven by particular hazards exterior to the hydrosocial system, while at local scales, the interactions between people and water are constant and evolving (Simpson et al., 2021). Respondents from SA emphasised the point that authentic relationships and knowledge were core to enabling sustainable transformations. Consent for strong government policy was enabled by community awareness of the acute need for reform in a water sector brought to crisis by drought. When reforms were supported by all stakeholders, from the Federal Government through to individual landholders, and the collaborative NRM model could reflect that mutual understanding of the need for effective, strong policy, substantial gains in local risk management resulted. Community stakeholders expressed confidence that government was striving to work in their mutual best interests – and either they would retain substantial decision-making power, or the state would lead effectively in situations that were highly technical or expensive, and therefore, beyond their capacities. Yet, the dialectical analysis also suggests that limitations in both water science and social systems worked to undermine support for policy and could limit opportunities to manage future hydrosocial risk.
Adaptation to hydrosocial risk in an era of climate change cannot simply be conceptualised as a response to particular events or singular hazards, but rather involves a transformation in social relations with water that is revisable and reflexive of particular situations (Muccione et al., 2024). In SA, the hydrosocial systems enabled governance and community actions that successfully negotiated the particular crisis of drought, but in politicising the process and marginalising communities, the hydrosocial became less resilient to ongoing risk. Only by emphasising the importance of authentic governance and community engagement in a critical dialectic with the water resource could the region implement adaptive management goals guided by targeted monitoring regimes. That finding raises important questions about the need for technical risk assessments, such as the National Climate Risk Assessment currently being conducted across Australia (Australian Climate Service, 2024), to reflect the socio-ecological realities within places to ensure that participatory governance and community cooperation are sustained or enhanced even as the data-led technical aspects of risk are better understood. As climate change risk becomes pervasive across society and ongoing multifaceted transformations are required, analysing and learning from socio-ecological processes built around integrity, cooperation, and mutual learning will be vital to understand risk and to guide sustainable hydrosocial systems.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers, along with the community and governance stakeholders who gave their time to respond to our queries. Special gratitude is due to Lian Jaensch, Langhorne Creek Grape and Wine and the local community for their support and assistance. This research forms part of the project “Hydrosocial Adaptations to Water Risk in Australian Agriculture”, funded through the Australian Research Council’s “Discovery” program, grant number DP210101849.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors have no conflicts of interest.
ETHICS STATEMENT
The research complies with Australian standards for Ethical Conduct in Human Research and gained ethics approval at the University of Adelaide (H–2021–101 and H–2021–009).
ENDNOTE
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
