Indigenous water planning guide

Statutory water rights for Australia's Traditional Owners and Indigenous communities remain one of the major unrealised promises of the national water reform process.

Position statements, public submissions and endorsed agreements from representative Traditional Owner and Indigenous groups have consistently articulated a preference for how these rights should be delivered: through the allocation of strategic reserves of water for commercial and custodial purposes.

While some legal and policy provisions for Indigenous water reserves have been created, the gap between these ‘hypothetical’ entitlements and the use of water resources for self-determined economic development opportunities persists.

TRaCK and other agencies including the National Water Commission have attributed this to a range of factors, including a low awareness of water planning processes and water reform generally among Indigenous people. Likewise, agency water planners have found difficulties in undertaking effective Indigenous engagement that contributes directly to statutory water plans.

Drawing from previous TRaCK research, the experiences of the Indigenous Water Facilitator Network and the wide-ranging work done on Indigenous interests in water planning, a field guide is being developed to help Indigenous communities better understand and participate in water planning, and to aid planners in facilitating Indigenous involvement.

The field guide will provide a single entry point to the information available and will describe what water planning is, how Indigenous people can get engaged and what they need to bring to the table to participate effectively.

The project team will look at a range of format options for the guide with the goal of creating a product that can be adapted to the varying knowledge and experience of different communities and updated by Indigenous communities with new information. It is hoped that in the long-term, this project will improve Indigenous participation in water planning and standards of community engagement.