Assessing Conjunctive Use Opportunities with Stakeholders in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia

Abstract

The management of global water resources is increasingly contested. Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) is an example relevant to many semiarid basins around the world. In the MDB, government has recovered substantial volumes of water to support environmental values, but irrigators and the industries and communities they support have opposed the objectives and process of water reform. Initiatives have been implemented to minimize the impact of these reforms on agriculture, but little attention has been given to opportunities that better integrate surface and groundwater resources [i.e., conjunctive use (CU)]. This paper presents a case study in the MDB where stakeholders worked together to identify, then assess, CU opportunities to increase agricultural production without compromising other values. The case study demonstrates the benefits of effective stakeholder engagement; that there are new CU opportunities worth investigating in the MDB; and that the framework used to facilitate the assessment is likely to have wider application.