Oral Presentation Australasian Groundwater Conference 2017

Collective action in groundwater management in practice - lessons learnt from the Angas Bremer irrigation district in South Australia.  (#229)

Sarah Shalsi 1 , Carlos MIraldo Ordens 1 , Allan Curtis 2 , Craig Simmons 3
  1. Faculty of Engineering Sciences , University College London (UCL), Australia , Adelaide , SOUTH AUSTRALIA, Australia
  2. Charles Sturt University , Albury-Wodonga, New South Wales , Australia
  3. National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT), Adelaide , South Australia , Australia

Between 1981 and 2001 the Angas Bremer (AB) catchment in South Australia provided a rare example of collective action amongst irrigators to manage a groundwater resource in Australia. By closely working internally as well as with government agencies, the community successfully recovered an aquifer that was at risk of deflection and salinisation. 

It is increasingly recognised that resource-user engagement in decision-making, through local collective action, is likely to offer effectiveness to groundwater management, which in turn can prevent groundwater depletion. However, the formal frameworks developed to facilitate resource-user participation in management have mainly been focusing on institutional design in isolation, often neglecting to incorporate important factors such as the social, historical and ecological context in which those institutions were created. Those specific contextual factors play a critical role in determining whether resource users are likely to work together towards the common goal of sustainably managing their groundwater resource. 

The key questions of this research analyse the extent to which AB was an example of collective action, how that changed over time, why it occurred and the key outcomes of collective action. These research questions aim to identify the main factors that facilitated or impeded collective action in groundwater management in an Australian context. 

Through a series of semi-structured interviews to further explore the context under which collective action arose as well as to understand individual perspectives and experiences, this presentation provides a summary of qualitative research that sets out to describe how the AB groundwater system has been managed over time and identifies lessons from that experience. 

The preliminary findings show that norms and values have a strong role in determining the successfulness of management approaches. However, a two-way relationship is required, where all stakeholders involved need to exchange knowledge and have a common understanding of each other's norms and values.

  1. Afroz, Sharmin, Rob Cramb, and Clemens Grunbuhel. "Collective Management of Water Resources in Coastal Bangladesh: Formal and Substantive Approaches." Springer US, 23 Jan. 2016.
  2. Skurray, James H. "The Scope for Collective Action in a Large Groundwater Basin: An Institutional Analysis of Aquifer Governance in Western Australia." Elsevier Ecological Economics. National Centre for Groundwater Research & Training, Adelaide, SA, Australia, 1 Apr. 2015.
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