The Murray-Darling Basin Initiative — OverviewThe Murray-Darling Basin Initiative is the partnership between the governments and the community which has been established to give effect to the 1992 Murray-Darling Basin Agreement. The purpose of the Agreement (Clause 1) is ' to promote and co-ordinate effective planning and management for the equitable, efficient and sustainable use of the water, land and other environmental resources of the Murray-Darling Basin'. The Initiative is the largest integrated catchment management program in the world, covering the watersheds of the Murray and Darling rivers, an area of over one million square kilometres. The Murray-Darling Basin Agreement was a recognition of the fact that no one government or group of people was able to deal with the Basin's emerging natural resource management problems and that the existing management arrangements were not able to cope with them. The involvement of the community is recognition of the fact that the task was not one that governments could fulfil on their own. The Agreement replaced the River Murray Waters Agreement which had been in place since 1915 (see A Brief History of the Murray-Darling Basin Agreement). Management of the River Murray System and sharing water between the southern Basin states remain an essential part of the current Agreement. The Murray-Darling Basin Agreement was initially signed by the governments of the Commonwealth, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia in 1987, and revised in 1992. Queensland became a signatory in 1996, with the Australian Capital Territory being added in 1998. There are thus six formal partner governments in the Agreement, with many departments and agencies involved (see Partner agencies). Figure 1 shows the overall governance of the Agreement i.e., the management structure set up to help achieve its purpose. Key elements specified in the Agreement are:
The Ministerial Council and the Commission contain representatives from each of the partner governments. The Community Advisory Committee represents the Basin's wider community, and its chairperson attends meetings of both the Ministerial Council and the Commission. The Commission is also advised by a number of high-level Project Boards and Committees and is supported by the Office of the Commission. The strategic and philosophical framework for achieving the purpose of the Agreement is the Natural Resources Management Strategy approved by the Ministerial Council in 1990. The Strategy provides the broad charter for a community-government partnership to develop plans for the integrated management of the Basin's water, land and other environmental resources on a catchment basis. In order to improve the performance and accountability of work undertaken under the Natural Resources Management Strategy, in 1996 the Ministerial Council put in place the Basin Sustainability Plan. The Program provides a planning, evaluation and reporting framework for the Natural Resources Management Strategy, and covers all government and community investment for sustainable natural resources management in the Basin. The Natural Resources Management Strategy and Basin Sustainability Plan are the foundation of the Commission's Basin-wide planning processes for natural resource management. The complexity of managing water resources that span the jurisdiction of more than one government was seen even before the Initiative came into being. There are a number of Other Inter-Jurisdictional Agreements in the Murray-Darling Basin which continue to operate. Whilst there is no formal link between any of these arrangements and the Initiative, continuity is provided by the fact that government ministers and officers involved with them are also involved with the Murray-Darling Basin Initiative. The Publications area provides access to a wide range of technical, educational and promotional material relating to the work carried out under the Initiative. |
ABOUT MDB INITIATIVE
