Groundwater Policies
Groundwater as the Cinderella of Water Laws,
Policies,
and Institutions in Australia
Prof Jennifer McKay
Director for the Centre for Comparative Water
Policies and Laws
School of Commerce
University of South Australia. GPO
Box 2471. South Australia 5000
Email Jennifer. McKay@unisa.edu.au
Web:
http://people.unisa.edu.au/Jennifer.McKay
The paper was commissioned to be delivered at the International symposium on Sustainable groundwater use in Alicante Spain in January 2006. It will be published in a book with many other papers and edited by a group of international editors including ger.bergkamp@iucn.org ICUN; Luis Marin Mexico; Jennifer McKay; Prof M. Ramon Llamas Spain; Thad Plumley; Katharine.cross@iucn.org; Steve Ragone (National Groundwater Association); Africa de la Hera Spanish Geological survey and Nuria Hernandez-Mora.
I wish to acknowledge the contribution of Adam Gray, School of Commerce Research Assistant for the Centre of Comparative Water Policies & Laws (University of South Australia) and Michael Griffin, law student (University of Adelaide) in preparing this paper.
ABSTRACT
Groundwater
is often overexploited in many parts of Australia. The reasons for the
overexploitation vary regionally but most relate to the laws and policies
which were designed to promote water development as a means to community
development. Currently, there are many laws and policies which seek to
undo this and require the achievement of ecologically sustainable
development.
This paper divides the laws, policies, and institutions in to three paradigms. The first was the dominance of the common law of groundwater which promoted the tragedy of the commons as it reinforced the notion of individual growers as owners of the water below their feet. This lasted up to 1896. The second phase which persists today was vesting of management control in the Crowns of each State. Such vesting happened later than the vesting of surface water and hence the Cinderella analogy in the title of this paper. The second part of this paper looks at some groundwater management laws and institutions between 1896 -1997.
The third phase goes up to the present time post the 1995
Council of Australian Governments reforms of water laws, policies, and
institutions where once again surface water was approached first. The
third phase involves the federal government in initiating changes to
State government laws, policies and institutions through fiscal and other
incentives. The final section looks at the most recent federal
government initiatives support conjunctive management of ground and
surface water, the use of markets to allocate water. These are achieved
through water planning processes that require all allocations to be
expressed as a share of an available resource. The share formula requires
that environmental sustainability be accounted for.
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