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Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar from US

A photograph of Sara Hughes the Fulbright Fellow at UniSAThe Director of the Centre for Comparative Water Policies and Laws Prof Jennifer McKay, Prof Atique Islam, PVC Prof Gerry Griffin and VC Prof Denise Bradley are delighted that Sara Hughes from the US Michigan State University has been selected as a 2006 U.S. Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar.

The Fulbright Program is one of the largest and most prestigious educational exchange programs in the world. Sara arrived in March 2007 to visit the Centre for 1 year to work on comparative water governance surrounding scarcity and sustainable solutions. The work will focus on links between the change in water resources, management institutions, and social discourse.  The management of the Murray River will be a particular focus, as well as water supplies for the city of Adelaide. 

This project will examine the beliefs and decision making priorities for water that are driving change in South Australia. We hope that by developing a clearer map of the beliefs, goals and values of those engaged in making decisions for water use, we can better understand the important challenges South Australia is undertaking for its future, and perhaps indicate a path to water use that equitably meets the needs of multiple sectors. This page will be regularly updated with news of this project.
 

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Project Synopsis (abstract): The Murray River is the primary source of drinking and irrigation water for millions of Australians.  This dependence on the Murray has serious implications for Australia.  With climatologists predicting significant changes in the rainfall patters, an ever increasing level of demand for water allocations, and wide spread changes in governing policy and legislation, it is critical that Australia manage the Murray effectively and sustainably.

UniSA's Fulbright scholar
by Geraldine Hinter
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Comparing water governance issues in Australia with those in the United States will be the focus of research for recently selected 2006 US Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar, Sara Hughes.
 

Organisers: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); publishers of Science, an international weekly science journal.
Theme: Science for Sustainability and Human Welfare
When/Where: February 15-19, 2007 in San Francisco
Paper Proposed by: Sara Hughes in collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Water Policy Program

Paper Abstract:
Sustainable management, use, and conservation of water resources are critical issues for the 21st century. Collaboration has become widely recognized as an important tool in the effort to achieve lasting and effective governance of commons resources. Important new experiments in collaborative governance of water resources are being conducted in the U.S. and throughout the world. A variety of opportunities for joint decision making are considered, from vertical to horizontal, institutional to individual. In the U.S., local, state, and federal agencies and authorities are adopting formal and informal collaborative stakeholder participation processes for decision making; a significant increase in watershed councils, advisory groups, and policy work groups attest to this.

There are also efforts to form diverse organizations that can bridge various communities and interests in disputes over water. Globally, nations are working together to build cooperative agreements for use in shared water basins. There is considerable enthusiasm about such efforts, but the costs and benefits of such collaboration are often unclear. This session brings together leading experts from the United States, Europe and Australia to review the state of the science in understanding collaborative approaches to water governance, emphasizing when and how they succeed and fail. The Centre hopes to highlight advances in international collaboration surrounding virtual water resources as well as emerging water markets in Australia.
 

Organisers: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); publishers of Science, an international weekly science journal.
Theme: Science for Sustainability and Human Welfare
When/Where: February 15-19, 2007 in San Francisco
Paper Proposed by: Professor Jennifer McKay in collaboration with the CRC IRRIGATION Futures
Paper Title: A typology of Water Governance regimes in Australia and barriers to sustainability- a review of CEO experiences.

Paper Abstract:
Title A typology of Water Governance regimes in Australia and barriers to sustainability- a review of CEO experiences.  The paper first establishes a typology of the existing types of water governance regimes by reviewing the legislation of 200 bodies in all Australian States. The outcomes about 24 types express the water history of Australia and the impact of the CoAG reforms after over 16o years of operations. The Utilities were required to restructure after the 1995 reforms. Each piece of legislation is also reviewed using the legal Coherency and legal consistency analysis methods from the Centre for Comparative Water policies and Laws for the type and measurement of ESD that is required of the key actors the CEO’S of the bodies.

The paper goes in to examine the problems with achieving Environmentally sustainable development from the perspective of the grass roots operators the CEO'S. All CEO’S were interviewed on this and another matters. The paper provides some advice on key barriers to ESD achievement of ESD related to Corporate form and also the impact of other aspects of the new laws.
 

Aquifers threatened by buoyant bottled water market
Pia Akerman
May 07, 2007
The Australian: Nature and Science

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Abstract: INSUFFICIENT regulation in the booming bottled water industry could see natural underground resources depleted.  Visiting American researcher and Fulbright scholar Sara Hughes said the "incredible" profits made by water companies should not exclude them from careful water management, particularly in times of drought.

UniSANews
Going with the flow
by Vincent Ciccarello

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It didn’t take visiting Fulbright scholar Sara Hughes long to sum up the taste of Adelaide water.  "It’s gross!" she said.  You’d expect someone born and bred on the shores of Lake Michigan ("we have tons of water") to be less than impressed by the quality of our drinking water. But when it comes to how Australia manages its precious water resources, Hughes couldn’t be more complimentary.

Organisers: The local organizer is Luciano Bardi, assisted by Eugenio Pizzimenti and Enrico Calossi
When/Where: 6 - 8 September, 2007, Pisa, Italy
Paper Title: Achieving Sustainable Water Transitions in Australia
Paper Presented by: Sara Hughes
Presented on: 7 September

Abstract:
Australia is developing new long term visions and transition agendas for water resources. Over the last twenty years, a new story line has emerged both within and outside of government that speaks of mismanagement, water crisis, and failed solutions. Change in the perception of water resources has taken place on a broad scale: water use and conservation have transitioned from images of purely economic importance to ones that include social and environmental concerns as well, relocating the place water has in Australian society. Federal level changes both internal and external to the water sector have resulted in transitions that have expanded the water sector's social and political domain. Water policies have been extended to include the welfare of new users and to account for the distribution of water in new ways.

These have resulted in "trickle-down" policy effects at multiple levels of policy making. Policy entrepreneurs have played an important role at different stages of transition, particularly in the development and implementation of new policies. We use two case studies as key examples of the ways federal level transitions have played out in state and local level arenas: the newly developed licensing system for forestry in southeast South Australia and the provision of environmental water allocations in the Murray River. In each case we focus on the critical and specific drivers of change, and the role of individual agents in managing (forestry) and implementing (environmental flows) the transition. For forestry, a change in federal level investment schemes prompted a new policy frame to emerge surrounding groundwater management in the southeast of South Australia. Entrepreneurs were involved in the implementation of change, and were able to manage the existing network and exploit venues for change in ways that guided the policy toward an outcome more favourable to their interests. In the case of environmental flows, a change in the resource itself--drought, algae blooms, rising salinity, and decreasing biodiversity--played a major role in shifting policy core beliefs of the national public and policymakers.

Changes occurred in the prioritization of values, deciding whose welfare counts, and the seriousness and causes of policy problems. These prompted the federal government, through the Murray Darling Basin Commission, to begin allocating water to six icon sits along the Murray River. However, implementation of these regulations requires further interactions among stakeholders (specifically at state and local levels) as allocation plans are negotiated, targets set, prices determined, and priorities re-evaluated. This provides an opportunity for policy entrepreneurs to interpret ambiguous targets during the implementation phase. Our cases highlight the importance of scale and interaction in water transitions in Australia, the diversity of approaches employed by actors and policy entrepreneurs in Australia, and the role new users may play in reframing water policy debates by requiring new strategies, collaborations, and accounting methods.

CALFED Science Fellowships Announced

A toxicologist who thinks endocrine disrupting contamination might be impairing fish health in the San Francisco Bay-Delta and an ecologist who believes nutrient pollution may be making the region more vulnerable to non-native species invasions are among this year's recipients of CALFED Science Fellowships.

Others receiving the fellowship include a wetland ecologist who hypothesizes that freshwater marshes in the Bay-Delta will be casualties of climate change and a river ecologist who links natural river flows to the maintenance of riparian forest habitat.

"My research will provide critical insights into fish productivity and water quality, since both are linked to tidal wetland health," said Lisa Schile, a fellowship recipient and doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley, who will be studying the effects of higher salinity levels and higher sea level – changes associated with global warming scenarios – on Bay-Delta wetland habitats.

Heidi Weiskel, another fellowship recipient and doctoral student in ecology in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis, will be studying whether nutrient pollution is facilitating invasive species success. "If it does, we will know that limiting nutrient pollution can be a tool for controlling invasive species," she said. We could go after what is making habitats friendlier for them." 

"We hope to be able to identify dynamic floodplain areas where forests can regenerate," said John Stella, a professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, who will be the academic mentor for fellow Alex Fremier. "This will allow managers to prioritize conservation of these areas." Stella and Fremier, a postdoctoral researcher at SUNY, will be collaborating with The Nature Conservancy on the project.

Each of the six selected fellows will receive up to three years support to conduct research of relevance to maintaining reliable water supplies and improving ecosystem health in the Bay-Delta and Central Valley. Annual stipends are $25,000 for doctoral students and $45,000 for postdoctoral researchers.  Support for the projects comes from CALFED Bay-Delta Program, a collaboration of 25 state and federal agencies with management or regulatory responsibilities in the San Francisco Bay-Delta and Central Valley, through its science program.

"We are excited about tapping the expertise of young scientists," said Shauna Oh, the program manager at California Sea Grant who oversees the fellowship program on behalf of the CALFED Science Program. "It is exciting to see them have the opportunity to address pressing issues in the Bay-Delta."

California Sea Grant is pleased to announce the six winners for 2007:

Susanne Brander, a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Toxicology at UC Davis; she hopes to identify specific endocrine disrupting chemicals causing the most harm to target fish species such as silversides, salmon and Delta smelt.

Alex Fremier, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Forest and Natural Resources Management at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse; his project will hopefully improve the long-term prospects for restoring and protecting one of the signature species of the Central Valley's riparian ecosystem – the Fremont cottonwood. 

Sara Hughes, a doctoral student at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Barbara; she will examine the policies and practices influencing how water is used in the Bay-Delta, especially as it relates to the Environmental Water Account, which attempts to maintain a store of water to release as needed to maintain target fish populations. 

Susan Lang, a postdoctoral researcher in the Geosciences Research Division of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla; she will develop novel isotopic biomarkers to identify sources of organic carbon supporting zooplankton in Suisun Bay. The findings have implications for explaining the decline of pelagic fish species in the region. 

Lisa Schile, a doctoral student in ecosystem sciences in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley; she will test plants' tolerances to higher salinity and inundation levels, in anticipation that climate change likely will bring both to the Bay-Delta. The project will shed light on how plants might respond to changing environmental conditions.

Heidi Weiskel, a doctoral student in ecology in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis; she will lead one of the first-ever efforts to examine the potentially critical relationship between nutrient pollution in the Bay-Delta and aquatic invasive species.

 

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