Institutional Arrangements
Traditional institutional separation of surface water from groundwater has created fundamental communication barriers that severely limit the implementation of a conjunctive approach. These barriers impede the understanding of the processes and consequences of groundwater-surface water interactions on water policy and management. Such separation is evident across policy development, operational management, research and development and even water users. Organisational change such as combining groups that make management decisions on groundwater and surface water resources is necessary.
Conjunctive water management requires a large amount of joint and coordinated effort among catchment communities and organisations; and institutions are the key to such coordination. Even where conjunctive water management is physically possible and economically feasible, whether and how it is pursued depends on the institutional setting. By better understanding, identifying and clarifying the relationship between institutional arrangements and water management outcomes, institutional researchers can help advance the larger goal of improving the sustainable use of water resources. Recently, Blomquist et al (2004) investigated the feasibility of conjunctive water management as a means of improving the water management, as well as how institutions affect conjunctive water management. The study compared the institutional and water management experiences in the three American western states of Arizona, California and Colorado and provided insight into the role of institutions in water management in a more general sense.
Recently, the NWI also recognised the importance of institutional arrangements to achieve of the environmental and other public benefit outcomes, including common arrangements in the case of connected groundwater and surface water systems (NWI Clause 79i C). The importance of institutions in terms of water laws, policies and organisational arrangements for water management in Australia, including the definition of water access/property entitlements have been discussed in the Rivers & Aquifers Workshop (Fullagar 2004). The institutional arrangements for managing water resources differ among the States in Australia (NGC, 2004). The workshop identified and recommended for adoption the following principle.
Jurisdictional boundaries should not prevent management actions
Discontinuity in government institutional arrangements between (and within) jurisdictions should not be an excuse for failing to identify and address issues associated with connected systems, or for not progressing opportunities associated with conjunctive water management (Fullagar, 2004).
Institutional factors such as the rules governing water use and the organisational arrangements for water management are likely to play important roles in determining whether, when, and how conjunctive management programs develop and perform. Institutions facilitate the ease with which multiple stakeholders interact in complex situations, prescribing what actions are allowed, required, or forbidden in given situations (Crawford and Ostrom, 1995). Thus, institutions are especially significant when a task requires coordination. Given the organisational and physical complexity involved with conjunctive management, it is likely to require considerable amounts of coordinated behaviour. For instance:
- Surface water facilities - such as dams, reservoirs and water distribution systems must be operated in coordination with groundwater supplies, with underground storage capacity, and with the bores and pipes for groundwater conveyance. Each of these facilities may be owned, operated, or regulated by distinct public or private organisations. Each of those organisations is governed by rules specifying what it may, must, and must not do. Those governing rules may be set at local, state, or national levels;
- Extensive monitoring of the conjunctive management operations and of water supply and storage conditions, and the exchange of information from that monitoring, are essential to conjunctive management success;
- Certain environmental and ecological thresholds need to be maintained (such as stream flows and surface water quality, flood control needs, riparian and aquatic habitat conditions) which are often governed or monitored by other rules and organisations;
- Environmental impacts can follow from conjunctive management projects, including land subsidence or seawater intrusion from excessive aquifer drawdown, soil saturation from excessive aquifer replenishment and migration of contaminants. These issues may be within the jurisdiction of the same organisations that operate or oversee these projects, but often they are within the jurisdiction of other (typically public) agencies.
In summary, there are institutional issues and affects at every step in even the simplest of conjunctive management projects. Those institutional arrangements can be conducive to success, or they can present substantial barriers.
References
Blomquist W, Edella S and Tanya H, 2004. Common Waters, Diverging Streams: Linking Institutions and Water Management in Arizona, California, and Colorado. Resources for the Future, Washington, D.C.
Crawford S, Elinor O, 1995. A Grammar of Institutions. American Political Science Review 89(3):582-598.
Fullagar I, 2004. Rivers and Aquifers: Towards conjunctive water management. Workshop Proceedings, Adelaide 6-7 May, 2004. Bureau of Rural Sciences.
NGC, 2004. Knowledge gaps for groundwater reform. A strategic directions paper for water researchers. National Groundwater Committee.