Moving Forward

From these messages, and through undertaking key components of the study in Water Availability, Water Use, and River and Wetland Health, a number of recommendations can be made:

• Integrated groundwater and surface water management assessment should be enhanced, including further mapping and analysis of the extent of groundwater – surface water interactions and the impact that increased groundwater extractions may have on streamflow and the environment.
• Agreement on a consistent approach to sustainable resource management, including the definition of sustainable yield or a surrogate, is needed across many jurisdictions and also nationwide.
• Resolution of nationwide, consistent, water resource management boundaries is needed, including regulated and unregulated areas, to ensure that surface water and groundwater resources are considered in a fully integrated manner. This will include recognition of the transboundary nature of our water resources (that is, they cross state and territory boundaries).
• Further water balances should be undertaken in the remaining water management areas or at least those with significant use. These would ideally consist of new areas that were not part of the water balances undertaken for AWR 2005, plus a revision of some of the selected areas, to provide temporal scale reporting and change detection.
• Consideration needs to be given to adopting variable timeframes for reporting of water balances to tailor reporting to the water year (starting and finishing in the dry season) for each system.
• Further studies into evapotranspiration volumes are required to improve the accuracy and reliability of this dataset, which will improve the water balance accuracy considerably.
• Further studies are recommended to ascertain the volumes of farm dams and their impact on water availability, current entitlements and environmental flows with a view to improved water management and to strengthening or introducing legislation.
• Analysis of natural streamflows and groundwater levels prior to development is required to understand the impact of development on these interactions and identify the potential for double counting of groundwater and surface water resources. Discussions should be held with the jurisdictions about the value of undertaking the water balances and to obtain their views on whether and how this approach can or should be further developed.
• A further improvement is needed with respect to the terminology of water use to ensure national consistency and to aid in the understanding of definitions by stakeholders.
• Future ABS water use surveys should be designed from the outset to report down to water management area boundaries, and the exercise should be repeated annually.
• Further implementation of the Framework for the Assessment of River and Wetland Health is required through funding trials, and support for a governance process and recognition of existing programmes. Further implementation should be considered by each of the parties to the NWI. This will enable the gaps in river and wetland health assessments across many jurisdictions to be filled and will assist in validating the relationships between environmental condition and available water.
• AWR 2005 has provided a baseline – if progress against NWI objectives and actions is to be monitored and evaluated, it needs to be repeated. However, this will be best undertaken through merging key aspects and water resource measures used in this study with the principles and frameworks being developed through other Government initiatives.
  

  

  AWR2005 has been undertaken by the National Water Commission to further our understanding of Australia’s water resources
  Image by Anthony Brinkley, sourced from Sinclair Knight Merz

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