Resilience, rivers and governance: Learning from experience

Abstract

<p>How can freshwater systems be governed to cope with the pressures of climate and other ecological change and increasing human demands? What arrangements could better govern coupled eco-social freshwater systems? How might institutional arrangements make these systems more resilient? There are no simple answers to these questions, but there are lessons that can be learnt from experience.</p> <p>The authors have set out to distil essential lessons about these matters, from a careful review of the history of the implementation of Australia's National Water Initiative, with particular regard to the governance of the country's most economically significant water system, the Murray–Darling basin.</p>