Water governance: a policy risk perspective

Contemporary management science embraces the analysis and management of risk of strategic or operational failure within the mainstream. Indeed, a failure to do so will, in most circumstances, be considered a failure of governance that may well be legally actionable. However, even in the face of powerful evidence that policy failure (fully or to some degree) is a normal element of water and other natural resource governance, public policy fails to contemplate and manage for this high probability contingency. Drawing on engaged and applied research conducted as part of the CRC Irrigation Futures institutional research program, meta-analysis commissioned by the Murray Darling Basin Authority, an international colloquium on water and conflict, and reviews of legal arrangements for water management, this paper considers the forms of risk of water policy failure, and mechanisms that might be effective in bringing water governance in line with at least the most basic standards of management and governance that apply in the private sphere.