Back in February we joined some from our community at one of the Murray Darling Basin Authority’s community consultation days. Following that we’ve been encouraging community members to make a submission to the authority, sharing their insights, values and perspectives on the plan. The response I wrote & submitted reflecting on my role as a Landcare coordinator is given below. While there were many potential avenues for improvement laid out in the plan, I felt asking for more resources and collaborative opportunities be directed towards Landcare a good fit. That perspective shaped the response I wrote and am sharing below.

Please do feel free to share what resonated most for you with the plan review & what angle your submission took.

Question 1: What do you think of the issues and options presented in the Basin Plan Review Discussion Paper?
I felt the basin plan made it easy to understand where previous actions had succeeded. i.e: in recovering more water and delivering some of that to the environment. I also appreciated the way the paper explored and discussed the limitations of the plan and what additional actions may be required to reach the MDBA goals. I was particularly happy to see the plan thinking outside the basin’s (riparian areas) and towards land management in catchment surrounds. This is where I feel organisations such as Landcare can really play a part in supporting the outcomes of the plan as we are in an excellent position to engage local land holders in on farm and in-community water management issues. For example, our Mid Lachlan Landcare team are ready to leverage our experience in salinity mapping and mitigating to support the MDBA reach its water quality goals. We are also well placed to work with graziers to slow run-off, improve on-farm water catchment through better grazing practice. We have also proven our worth in the wider community in our work with Oz Fish on both restoring habitat and in helping roll out a carp muster in our area. While working across basin catchments with Landcare would not solve all the issues presented in the plan, this review highlighted enough synergies and opportunities to warrant a closer look at how we can work more closely together.

Question 2: Are there other issues and options that should be considered?
Chapter 11 (Page 81 of the Discussion Paper) outlines ways to ensure there is a robust information base for future decision-making in Basin water management. There are knowledge gaps, and better science and monitoring is needed. Landcare has a history of partnering with the Australian Citizen Science Association to deliver high quality data collection projects via citizen science. I would like to see how the MDBA can leverage the opportunity this presents to fill some of the data gaps it identifies. Technology in this space is developing rapidly with tools and apps able to orientate you in the landscape and capture data collected in real time. In addition, many citizen science projects can be run autonomously on an opt-in basis by community members. Landcare can and does support these projects by promoting their presence, assisting with training and orientating participants and creating a sense of community pride around participation.

Groundtruthing – Local knowledge and connectivity.

The plan acknowledges the difficult climate environment we are entering into with more uncertainty and changing paradigms. Flexible thinking and rapid responses to changing conditions are likely to be more successful if you have real, groundtruthed knowledge, that is, information and observations that have come from real-life rather than modelling. I believe the basin plan values real-world modelling and believe that Citizen Science and organisations such as Landcare can help support the delivery of that.

Question 3: What do you see as the priorities and why?
Building strategic partnerships who can deliver on specific problems highlighted in plan feels like a useful next step. While the MDBA has identified the need for action outside of riparian areas and direct water systems, it could become too complicated, beurocratic and overwhelming to cover everything in detain under the plan. Instead, I feel the MDBA could act like a central hub of a wheel of partners working together to solve the various structural, functional and process related issues the plan has raised.

Have you provided any Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP), Cultural Knowledge or First Nations data as part of this submission?
No