Subtitle: Water, dams and the end of civilisation?

Jon Nevill jonathan.nevill@gmail.com

Did ancient civilisations collapse through water mis-management? Contemporary evidence suggests that, even with present-day science, we are capable of extremely bad management of this vital resource. I draw attention to two non-scientific mechanisms at work to erode good management: the tragedy of the commons, and the tyranny of small decisions. I then examine four particularly difficult issues in the water management area: (a) sustainability, (b) the protection of representative freshwater ecosystems, (c) cumulative effects, and (d) fish passage. The final section of the paper contrasts differing present-day approaches to dam building in Tasmania, New South Wales, and Queensland.

My thanks go to staff of the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment (DPIWE) involved in water management, particularly the four authors of an internal discussion paper on water issues: David Fuller, Jenny Dyring, Ian Bell and Stuart Chilcott. This paper is heavily influenced by their work.

Responsibility for the views expressed, as well as responsibility for any factual errors or important omissions, rests with me. The views expressed in no way represent the views of the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment (unfortunately!). In preparing this paper I am hoping that readers with detailed information on specific areas will contact me.

Jon Nevill (BA, BE(Mech), MEnvSc) has provided environmental advice to Commonwealth and State governments, and has worked as a sub-consultant for Kinhill in the area of environmental impact assessment. He has co-authored two books and published around 30 papers on various environmental issues.

If we look back over the last five thousand years, we have evidence that great civilisations have risen and fallen. What caused the collapse of the civilisations, for example, that existed around the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys, or those of central America?

Was it disease? war? perhaps even climate change? In something as substantial as the collapse of a civilisation, reasons were probably complex. However, my guess is that the mis-management of water was a primary cause. Out of three key primary resources which any civilisation needs: clean air, fresh water and arable land, water is the resource which can most easily be damaged by human demands.

Around the planet today, about 15 million children (between the ages of 0 and 5 years) die each year, mostly in the third world. Of these, over 5 million die from causes related to water pollution and water-borne disease.

With the world’s population now at around 6 billion, and predicted to reach 10 billion before the middle of next century, the prospects for any major improvement in these statistics are slim.

And what of the developed world? Australia, for example?

Forty thousand years of Aboriginal occupation appear to have produced substantial vegetation change, and extinction of elements of the megafauna. However, Australia’s human inhabitants did not build dams. That situation changed two centuries ago when Europeans invaded this continent.

I read an account of a recent trip by a Victorian conservationist to inland NSW. When she reached the Darling, one of Australia’s great rivers, and found a small septic "drain", clogged with weed, she burst into tears. This is the bottom line. The Darling has become so degraded, primarily by water abstractions, that you can’t even get a canoe down substantial sections in summer.

One of Australia’s great rivers…

Substantial areas of the Murray-Darling Basin have been effectively removed from agriculture through the effects of water logging and salinity. A special purpose government agency has been established to remedy the problem. …with limited success. Over large areas water tables are still rising, and salinity increasing. Vast wetlands have been drained. Dams and levy banks have been constructed. Floods which acted as stimulus for the spawning of native fish and the breeding of waterfowl no longer occur. Weeds clog our rivers, and the introduced carp muddies their waters.

How could we get it so wrong?

You might say: "Well, that’s all very well, but we know better today. These days we do things differently".

Maybe, maybe not. I argue below that the degradation continues, and will continue. The situation is complex. It is difficult to predict even the most important elements of a complex future. But we can say that there are two mechanisms which work strongly to continue the path towards degradation.

The setting for the tragedy of the commons (Hardin, 1968; Attachment 1) is that of a public resource ("the commons") subject to private use. Excessive use of the resource will cause its degradation.

For example, public land may, by right or by tradition, be available to shepherds for grazing their flocks. If the flocks are small in comparison to the resource, the land will sustain little (perhaps no) damage. If the price the shepherd receives for his produce is more than enough to compensate for the rent (all things considered) there will be an incentive to increase the size of his flock.

As the grazing pressure increases, the land will start to degrade. But the profit the shepherd makes from his extra sheep accrues directly to him, whereas the cost of the damage the sheep cause to the land is born by the whole community. For the person who makes the decision (the shepherd) the profit from the extra sheep will tend to outweigh the cost, until the commons becomes highly degraded and sheep start to die.

The profit one farmer makes from using the water in his dam accrues to him directly; the costs of the degradation to the river system are born by the whole community.

So… mechanisms are necessary to ensure sustainability of use. We all know that. But when we look at the Murray-Darling, we know these mechanisms have failed.

Why have they failed? And are the mechanisms which are now in place more likely to be effective?

The tyranny of small decisions (Odum 1982, Attachment 2) is to some extent an extension of the tragedy of the commons. It has to do with the way public agencies, charged with the management of a public resource, make decisions about the use of this resource.

Firstly it is common for such agencies to have a charter aimed at protecting the sustainable value of the resource. Secondly, it is also common for such agencies to have a list of considerations to be taken into account when making decisions, and one consideration will, of course, relate to the interests of applicants wishing to undertake developments.

Thirdly, in any strategic plan, there are almost always discretionary clauses available to the public agency. Activity X is not to be permitted, except in special circumstances…

The mechanism of the tyranny of small decisions relates to the smallness of the effects, and their cumulative nature. The degradation of the resource resulting from one small decision is so small, in the overall scheme of things, that it is difficult to identify, and almost impossible to predict in quantitative terms. Now, if it is impossible to measure, surely, surely… it cannot be weighed against the pressing interests of the applicant?

As an example, let us say a local municipality develops a plan relating to a small estuary. Fifty percent of all fringing mangroves have already disappeared. Their role in nutrient recycling and the provision of habitat is recognised. There is to be no further clearing of mangroves. The strategy is accepted. The following year, the Major’s brother purchases a property adjacent to the water. He applies to build a jetty. Yes, clearing of mangroves is prohibited, but there is a discretionary clause, and, after all, only a small area is involved… So the jetty goes ahead. And, three months later, another, and another… Ten years later, only a few scattered mangroves survive as reminders of the shoreline which once was…

This mechanism, of course, applies to catchments. What harm can just one more small dam do…?

Four issues present particular difficulties to those working to use and protect freshwater resources:

• cumulative effects
• sustainability
• protection of representative freshwater ecosystems, and
• fish passage

Take the tragedy of the commons, add the tyranny of small decisions, and you have cumulative effects. And you have a problem which is very difficult to deal with.

The framework for managing cumulative effects is not well developed at either a State or national level:

National level:

• no guidance, other than the general frameworks provided by:
  *the COAG water reform agenda (Attachment 3);
  *the National Water Quality Management Strategy;
  *a discussion paper put out by Environment Australia on assessing cumulative effects.

• no policy relating to management of cumulative effects in catchments;
• draft State ICM policy not yet released for public comment;
• no analysis of existing cumulative effects in catchments.

Other Australian States:

• NSW study of the Hawkesbury-Nepean basin (in press);
• NSW DLWC policy of 10% "harvestable right"(discussed below);
• MDBC study of the Murray Darling basin (in press);
• Queensland’s Environment Protection Policy for Water requires cumulative effects to be taken into account within the State’s water quality management framework.

Of the dozen or so catchment management plans published in Tasmania to date, most mention the matter of farm dams, and some contain inventories of the number of dams and their location within the catchment. However, of these plans, none quantify the capacity of catchment dams, nor do they develop recommendations regarding any kind of assessment or decision structure around the issue of either promoting or controlling dam development.

The fact is that, in some catchments, we are already, arguably, at the point where we have too many dams. For example, the twenty kilometre long catchment of Claytons Rivulet contains around 160 dams – almost all in the stream line. These dams are capable of harvesting in excess of 20% of the (one-in-five) dry year annual flow in the catchment. Overall, the capacity of the dams is large enough, in total, to impact in a significant way on flood flows, and thus on stream geomorphology – and stream habitat value. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the stream ceases (or almost ceases) to flow in the lower reaches towards the end of summer, most years. Again, anecdotal evidence suggests that native fish are now absent from this stream.

In some of Tasmania’s larger catchments, while the situation is not so serious, there is still reason for concern. The Meander Catchment contains around 350 farm dams, capable of harvesting about 5% of the 20th percentile annual flow (a one in 5 dry year). In a nearby Midlands catchment, the Macquarie, the equivalent figure appears to be approaching 20%. While these figures initially appear to suggest a minor, rather than a serious problem, it should be borne in mind that both catchments are currently subject to major dam building proposals. In the case of the Meander, if the major proposal being promoted by the Forest Protection Society were to go ahead, the total capacity of dams in the catchment would increase by 43 GL (over 200%), while in the Macquarie, the largest of the current dam proposals is for an 80 GL dam, contrasting starkly with the current total capacity of all dams in this catchment of only 16 GL.

Tasmania’s most heavily used catchments are reaching the point where they appear to be "over-built" with dams, however there is no policy framework in Tasmania to guide government regulators in their assessment of the cumulative effects of dams. Indeed, the draft ICM policy which the Minister for the Environment had indicated would be published in October this year has not appeared. Without such a policy, our catchments will progress incrementally to the very serious situations in which the mainland Murray-Darling catchment now finds itself. Catchment planning groups, without this policy framework, can do little except raise the issue and then ignore it – and this is, in fact, what is happening in Tasmania.

Tasmania’s State Policy for Water Quality Management (SPWQM) formally endorses the precautionary principle. However, the principle is, at present, not used in any specific sense within the government decision-making process.

Due to the complex and incremental nature of threatening processes and effects, science does not, and cannot, provide us with benchmarks. We must establish simple, measurable benchmarks on the basis of judgement.

All Australian States have begun the process of developing environmental flow recommendations, at least for major river systems. These environmental flows, once agreed, will be built into water allocation plans. However, this process may take some years to become effective as a tool for managing flows.

In Tasmania, water allocations can be changed over time; however compensation provisions apply. Dam permits, however, cannot be revoked. Once issued, the dam is there for ever. Given historical precedent, great care must be taken in making decisions which cannot be altered.

Cumulative effects are an extremely serious issue in Australian water management, and any policy developed relating to the management of cumulative effects needs to specifically acknowledge, and encourage the use of, the precautionary principle (Attachment 4).

In such policies, it is essential to acknowledge a basic difficulty: that the application of the precautionary principle, in the management of cumulative effects, will produce results which appear unfair on individual farmers. Without this explicit acknowledgment, policies dealing with cumulative effects will never be effective.

For medium to large dams designed primarily for irrigation, assessing the sustainability of dam proposals means assessing the sustainability of the irrigation programs on which the dams depend for their economic viability. Few Australian States, at present, have agreed protocols for assessing the sustainability of large dams.

At both National and State levels, statutory, policy and financial frameworks exist which provide an imperative for the proper assessment and management of agricultural sustainability:

• National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development 1992
• the COAG water reform agenda

• section 153 of the proposed Water Management Act 1999 requires that dam permits further the objectives of the Act. These objectives include ensuring sustainability;
• the interim State Policy for the Protection of Agricultural Land contains commitments both to sustainability and environmental objectives (like biodiversity).

Other Australian States: I have no information.

Tasmania’s Resource Management and Planning System (the RMPS - a suite of legislation - including legislation for landuse planning, water management and environmental assessment) requires government agencies to act "so as to achieve the objectives of the RMPS". One of the key statutory objectives of the RMPS is ecological sustainability. This provision is in line with national commitments set out in the National Strategy on Ecologically Sustainable Development, the National Water Quality Management Strategy (NWQMS), and the COAG Water Reform Agenda. The Tasmanian Interim Policy for the Protection of Agricultural Land 1999 is also focused on sustainability as one of its key principles.

However, there are difficulties in applying this requirement to the assessment of proposed agricultural dams, and their related irrigation projects. These difficulties reflect: (a) the lack of accepted assessment techniques, (b) the uncertainties involved in predicting irrigation programs over a decade or more, and (c) the lack of supporting data, particularly with respect to sub-soil drainage.

In assessment of sustainability, the most important (and readily assessed) issues relate to salinity and waterlogging. Issues related to sodicity, soil structure, and soil biota are less amenable to general assessment techniques.

In the case of salinity, long term sustainability depends on preventing the build-up of salt levels in the soil. There are four key factors:

• The amount of salt applied to the land: ie: the amount of salt in the water used for irrigation, and the amount of water applied to the land during the irrigation season – together providing the total salt load;
• the drainage characteristics of the soil;
• the amount of winter (flushing) rainfall; and
• the ability of the sub-soil aquifer to convey the salts to a river system, or other acceptable drainage systems (eg: evaporation basins or sacrificial aquifers)

Mapping of these four factors has not, at this stage, been undertaken over anything but extremely small areas of the State. Such mapping is not currently available to the routine dam assessment process in Tasmania.

Tasmania’s soil mapping is well developed (at 1:25,000 scale) over a relatively restricted portion of the country. However, work is on-going at present, and is producing useful public data on soils and land capability. The land capability data is available to the public on the 1:100,000 scale, which (although useful for broad landuse planning) is not generally suitable for use in developing detailed farm plans or irrigation management plans.

The saline characteristics of surface waters are well understood, as are rainfall patterns. However, sub-soil drainage is much less well understood, and there does not appear to be adequate data except over only a very limited part of Tasmania.

A very significant issue is the need to detect land with high salt storage. If salt has been stored in the landscape the salt can be mobilised by deep drainage from irrigation water including good quality irrigation water and salinity will then be induced in lower lying areas, streams and rivers. As many areas where irrigation dams are proposed will have adjacent land with high salt storage it is critical that this land is identified before any irrigation is applied.

In many areas salty water tables may be present. Deep drainage from irrigation will inevitably raise some of these to the point they intersect the surface and salty discharges will result.

The assessment of any large agricultural dam should include an assessment of the sustainability of the irrigation programs on which the dam depends for its viability. Any feasibility study for irrigation should include an assessment to see if there is significant salt storage present in the area to be irrigated and an assessment of whether there is any saline water table present which is likely to be effected by deep drainage from the irrigation being applied. (In some cases there may be saline water storage at depth but if confined by impermeable layers above will not be affected by deep drainage).

Currently the best method to assess salt storage is to use electromagnetic induction techniques At farm scale on-ground techniques are the most effective but while available on the mainland this technology is not readily available in Tasmania.

(After Jenny Dyring 1999)

Assessments for river classification, as well as management and rehabilitation principles, stress the importance of baseline geomorphic characterisation of rivers, leading to assessment of their conservation values from a biophysical perspective#; followed by prioritisation of river management and rehabilitation works, looking at their recovery potential from a geomorphological point of view. Recent publications on river management and rehabilitation also stress the importance of geomorphological assessments of fluvial systems for the protection of special and representative geomorphological sites.

It is important to initially apply a "geomorphic template" as the basis of both conservation assessments and development of management priorities for freshwater systems. Sites along rivers need to be assessed and managed for their intrinsic geomorphological and ecological values, and as geomorphological benchmark sites which may be used to guide rehabilitation works. Such sites are presently being assessed and listed in the Tasmanian Geoconservation Database. These sites will then be assessed for inclusion in the reserve system at an appropriate level, or ear-marked for protection under private covenanting, management agreement or reservation schemes under the Tasmanian National Parks and Wildlife Act.

The concepts of (a) freshwater reserves and (b) the protection of natural values in multiple use water environments are included in the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia’s Biological Diversity 1996, and its predecessor, the International Convention on Biological Diversity 1992. At a national level, Australia is committed to these strategies. The concept of the reservation of freshwater ecosystems is also embedded in the World Charter for Nature, a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations (1982).

In Australia, comparatively little work has been done in regard to the first aspect ("a" above), while the second aspect ("b") is more highly developed. In this regard there appears to be a need to apply the CAR principles, one of the cornerstones of the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia’s Biological Diversity, to the aquatic environment. The CAR principles relate to the creation of a reserve system which is comprehensive, adequate and representative.

A variety of approaches are used overseas, and in other Australian States. The Victorian government has provided legislative protection for a number of key Victorian rivers under the Heritage Rivers Act 1992. This Act was based on an investigation and public inquiry process run by Victoria’s Land Conservation Council. The inquiry took into account geomorphological, ecological, scenic and recreational values. The Act sets in place a management regime designed to provide special protection for these rivers.

Tasmania is committed, at international, national and State levels, to the protection of biological diversity, and, as a key component of that commitment, to the protection of representative ecosystems:

1. International level:

2. National level:

3. State level:

Land can be declared a protected area to conserve conservation values under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1970 (NPWAct, several categories, depending upon management purpose and objectives), the Forestry Act 1920 (Forest Reserve) and the Crown Lands Act 1976 (Public Reserve). The NPWAct includes all land covered by sea or water and the part of the sea or waters covering that land. The Act covers all wildlife across all tenures and includes freshwater fish, but not marine fish. The Act may prescribe plants that are to be ‘protected plants’ and therefore be covered by the Act across all tenures.

The Tasmanian Threatened Species Protection Act 1995 covers all listed threatened species of flora and fauna on any land tenure. Vegetation communities are not covered by this Act and therefore not on private land. The Aboriginal Relics Act 1975 applies to all pre-1876 Aboriginal values across all tenures.

Private land can also be protected under the NPWAct as a private reserve, or covered by a conservation covenant or management agreement - which offer different levels of security of tenure. Any agreements entered into with landowners are voluntary and co-operative. Management plans may be developed for the area in conjunction with the landowner, and are binding for the life of that plan and only with the designated owner. Incentives may be available through other schemes to encourage landowners to enter into such agreements. These are usually funded through the Natural Heritage Trust and administered by NGOs. Few incentives currently exist at State or local government levels, although the exemption of land tax for landowners with conservation covenants was a recent concession on the part of the State government.

Non-legislative options for temporary physical protection of natural conservation values can be found under NHT-funded schemes such as Bushcare, Greening Australia, etc.

As set out above, Australia (and of course Australia’s constituent States) are committed to the concept of representative freshwater reserves at international and national levels.

However, the implementation of these commitments across the different States has been variable. Victoria is "leading the pack" with its Heritage Rivers Act 1992. New South Wales began investigation of a freshwater reserves system, but the program has been shelved for the moment. Queensland is currently considering the development of a possible Natural Rivers Policy to carry the freshwater reserves concept.

Importantly, flow and quality controls will NOT ensure fish passage (see below), and are unlikely to protect the full suite of aquatic ecosystem values in the face of vigorous human demand for water for agricultural, industrial and urban use.

Fish passage considerations apply to both dams and weirs. The framework for managing fish passage is not well developed at either a State or national level:

• no guidance, other than the general frameworks provided by:
  *the National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia’s Biological Diversity 1996
  *the COAG water reform agenda
  *the National Water Quality Management Strategy.

• powerful "provide passage" provisions (s.136 and s.160) of the Inland Fisheries Act (not applied in practice)
• the issue is often technically intractable
• no policy
• no guidelines

• a variety of research papers exist
• no policy?
• no guidelines?

Fish passage is a serious issue in Tasmania. The Inland Fisheries Act provides the government with a powerful tool for ensuring fish passage "rights" in Tasmanian streams (the wording of the Act implies it would come into action after a dam or weir had been built). However, these provisions are not used to any significant effect.

The situation is that, in this State, no adequate guidelines exist in regard to ensuring the passage of native fish (or desirable introduced species such as trout) past on-stream farm dams. And the construction of on-stream farm dams has been, and remains, current practice. Although off-stream dams are "encouraged", cost and topographic factors work strongly against their construction.

Generally speaking, the current situation is that, when a farm dam is permitted on a stream where fish passage is an issue, the farmer is required: "to construct a spillway of 1:15 gradient or less, with sufficient resting pools for fish". The farmer may receive no further written guidelines on the spacing or depth or shape of the pools, nor are there guidelines on the width, depth or shape of the connecting passages between the resting pools. The farmer is given an IFC contact name and phone number for the provision of further advice; however in practice he has no incentive to seek this advice, and seldom does. There are no guidelines on the maintenance of these "fish passage spillways", on the management of resting pools, or guidelines on ensuring useful spillway flow.

Consequently, there are good reasons to believe these spillways, even when constructed, are either inadequate for fish passage, or are so poorly maintained as to rapidly loose effectiveness over a period of a few years – as erosion, stock access, or the growth of vegetation in and around the resting pools take their toll. And, of course, the use of spillways to provide fish passage assumes that water does actually flow over the spillway during those months of each year that fish move upstream in their breeding cycle. However, many dams are too big for this to occur on a regular basis . In many cases the size of the dams in relation to their catchments are such that significant spillway flow is likely to occur only once in 5 or 10 years: quite inadequate in regard to fish passage needs.

Building effective fishways around weirs can often be achieved, partly due to the fact that surface spill occurs most of the time, and partly due to the low profile which weirs generally have – providing the opportunity for bypass channels or rock fish ramps. The most urgent need here appears to be the development of generic designs which can be provided to the owners of weirs and small dams. The development of farmer extension material, such as explanatory videos, should also be a high priority.

However, building effective fishways to allow passage around medium to large dams represents substantial problems, and their design is a rapidly evolving area at the present time. Vertical slots and fish locks are approaches which are being developed and tested in various places.

Fish travelling downstream over large dams often take the spillway route even when a fish ramp is provided. Survival rates for different species need to be examined, along with engineering options to increase survival rates (such as plunge pools).

Three eastern Australian States provide examples of different administrative responses to dam development.

As part of the COAG water reform agenda, all Australian States have revised water legislation. One aspect of this revision allows investors (within certain constraints) to build dams and sell water – not an option available to the private sector under previous arrangements. In some States, these changes have produced a flurry of interest in dam construction.

In regard to the COAG requirements relating to the sustainable development of water resources, the Strategic Water Reform Framework (1994) declared that:

• ‘future investment in new schemes or extensions to existing schemes be undertaken only after appraisal indicates it is economically viable and ecologically sustainable’ and
• ‘where significant future irrigation activity or dam construction is contemplated, appropriate measures are to be undertaken to...allow natural resource managers to satisfy themselves that the environmental requirements of the river systems would be adequately met before any harvesting of the water resource occurs’.

The rivers of coastal NSW flow from the ridge of the Great Dividing Range eastwards towards the Pacific Ocean. These rivers flow through the most densely populated area of the State; an area which also contains most of the State’s high capability arable land. As a result, these rivers have generally been heavily used. Several eastern catchments are currently subject to dam embargoes, although these may be lifted depending on the outcome of the water management planning process.

By far the majority of the State lies west of the Great Dividing Range. Rivers over this area flow generally south west, forming the largest river system in Australia: the Murray-Darling. As already mentioned, large areas of the basin are seriously degraded, partly through the effects of salinity and waterlogging. Water resources have been over-allocated. A cap has been placed on new water allocations. In some areas water usage has continued to increase slowly under the cap, due to the effects of "sleeping" water allocation licences. In other areas reductions in water allocations have been achieved.

As you might expect, few major dam proposals have been put forward in recent times. Exceptions relate to controversial proposals to service the cotton industry. In summary, NSW is generally in the position of trying to wind back, rather than expand, water usage.

Queensland Governments of all political persuasions have moved actively to implement the COAG Water Reform Framework.. Key among these actions has been the development of a Water Allocation and Management Planning (WAMP) process which provides for environmental flows in each river system. The development of a tradeable water entitlements system is another key initiative.

In 1996, the Government of the time established a Water Infrastructure Task Force to prepare an overall strategy for the development of water infrastructure throughout Queensland for the following 15 years. The strategy recommended a number of projects for immediate progression, but it also recommended certain catchment/regional planning and assessment studies and environmental flow research projects. At the same time an improved impact assessment process for water infrastructure proposals was established.

Under the program the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency is being funded to develop a method by which the conservation values of watercourses can be determined. This work will assist/direct the State in its water infrastructure development planning and will also inform the WAMP process. Research on fisheries and fishways has also been funded under the program. The intractable issues of: cumulative effects, the protection of special or representative freshwater sites, and fish passage - all feature in the Qld program.

In summary: there is considerable interest in water infrastructure development in Queensland, with the current emphasis being on the development of the information systems to support the decision-making structures. This is consistent with the State’s commitments to meet the environmental provisions of the COAG Water Reform Framework. The aim is to create an economically viable/ecologically sustainable water infrastructure development program.

The Tasmanian Water Management Act 1999 (WMA) was developed within the COAG water reform framework. It provides for the development of Water Management Plans (which are essentially water flow allocation plans). The determination and inclusion of environmental flow requirements is incorporated in the water management planning process.

Water quality management is largely the province of the statutory State Water Quality Management Policy 1997 (SWQMP). This Policy was developed within the National Water Quality Management Strategy (NWQMS) framework. Both the WMA and the SWQMP lie within the "sustainability" framework provided by the National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development 1992, as does the State’s Resource Management and Planning System (RMPS). The RMPS is a suite of legislation (including the WMA) each having complementary objectives – all including sustainability and environmental goals.

So far so good. However, when the Water Management Bill was presented to parliament, it was accompanied by advice that the Act would be cost-neutral; ie: the Act would not need extra resources to implement. This was, in my view, exceptionally bad advice. The philosophy underlying the Act involves major improvements in water management – short term costs for important long term gains.

The problem is now that Tasmania has a piece of "modern" legislation, with all the responsibilities which go with planning for sustainable water use and the protection of the environment – but without an adequate budget to do the work.

Proposals have been put forward by private companies for the construction of a dozen or so large agricultural dams in the 10 to 100 GL range. These dams would increase Tasmania’s total agricultural dam capacity by around 200%. Rather than develop a program to support the assessment of such large proposals (as has been done, for example, in Queensland) the Tasmanian government has chosen to press ahead with their immediate assessment – in spite of the fact that neither (statutory) water management plans nor (non-statutory) catchment management plans are sufficiently developed to properly support the planning of such large proposals.

The situation is made more complicated by the fact that the State is in the early stages of a process of establishing water-based environmental values (under the umbrella of the SWQMP). Furthermore, the fact that Tasmania has no inventory of freshwater ecosystems (even the wetlands inventory is incomplete) makes a full assessment of the impact of these proposals nearly impossible within the timeframe which both the developers and the Tasmanian government are expecting.

In my view, the Tasmanian program fails to meet either the spirit or the letter of the COAG requirements listed above.

Our problem is not lack of knowledge, or lack of science. There will always be incomplete knowledge of the workings of complex natural water systems. Our problems lie in areas which have to do with our values, our time-scales, and the way we think.

Figuratively speaking, we walk a path which we can see others have walked before. It is a path leading from an abundance of natural resources to a destination of degradation and destruction. The problem is that the path is long, and we take many tiny steps. Although we sense the direction we are walking, we shut our eyes to the destination. And why not take another small step? Why not one more dam? A farmer needs the water… today.

Can we make sensible long term decisions? Our politicians are elected every few years. Our accountants do their books every 12 months. The degradation of natural resources is only clear when measured in time-scales of decades or centuries.

The scenery along our path changes only imperceptibly. At no point do we come to a cross-road, where there is a sign saying "Wrong way! turn back! Onwards to degradation and destruction. Turn back for salvation!" The sign just isn’t there. So we take one more small step…

We humans are supremely adaptable animals. But we are not as smart as we think. We have evolved from thousands, hundreds of thousands of years as hunter-gatherers. We still carry the instincts that served us well in that context. We make decisions about what is happening right now, or maybe tomorrow. We make decisions about our own back yard, rather than seeing our back yard as part of a bigger picture. The problem is – now we are in control of the planet.

The future of our species on this planet depends on our ability to develop institutions and cultures which can make up for our inability to plan for the long term. And which can provide stewardship for the earth and all its inhabitants. Looking around us, there are some signs for optimism. In regard to water, more so in Queensland rather than in Tasmania… But we are running out of time…

In regard to the management of water resources, we must establish signposts for ourselves along the path, and do it quickly. We also have to recognise that we cannot rely on science to guide us in erecting these signposts. We must be guided by judgement and wisdom, and a certain humility regarding the stewardship of vital natural systems which we do not fully understand.

CAR Comprehensive, adequate and representative (applying to reserve systems)

COAG Council of Australian Governments

DLWC Department of Land and Water Conservation (NSW)

DPIWE Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment (Tasmania)

EMPCA Environmental Management and Pollution Control Act 1994 (Tasmania)

ESD Ecologically sustainable development

GL Gigalitre: a thousand million litres

ICM Integrated Catchment Management

MDBC Murray Darling Basin Commission

ML Megalitre: a million litres.

NSW New South Wales

NWQMS National Water Quality Management Strategy

SPWQM State Policy for Water Quality Management (Tasmania)

TCM Total Catchment Management

WMA Water Management Act 1999 (Tasmania)

References are categorised into "general" and "freshwater reserves":

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