滋賀大学学術情報リポジトリ

I

Water governance in Australia’s Murray Dar-ling Basin is a highly contested issue between the state governments and the national govern-ment which recently moved to substantially take over control of high level policy. The start-ing point for the latest round of institutional innovations was increasing public disquiet about the serious decline in the environmental condition of the MDB1） _{observed over recent}

decades. This reflects a number of unresolved questions. What should be the role of govern-ments and what is best left to business and individuals? Who are the stakeholders? How should the demands of irrigated agriculture be balanced against those of other interests? What should be the relationship between policy and research? What type of monitoring should be conducted and how can the resulting data best be used? This debate is taking place in a con-text where the effects of climate change are increasingly evident.

The MDB produces approximately 40 per-cent of Australia’s gross value of agriculture. It is just over a million square kilometres in size and has a diverse range of landscapes, ecosys-tems, land uses and climates and includes over 30,000 wetlands, eleven of which are listed un-der the Ramsar Convention of Wetlands of International Importance. Divided between the southern and eastern Australian states of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory – each with their different systems of water entitlements and management - the MDB is home to just under two million people and supplies much of the water used by anoth-er million in South Australia. Those three

Water Markets and

the Murray-Darling

Basin Plan

Daniel Connell

Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University / Research Fellow

Articles

1) State of the Environment 2011 Committee (SOE 2011), Australian State of the Environment 2011,Inde-pendent Report to the Australian Government Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and

million people and various industrial activities use about 4 percent of the water diverted from the regions rivers. The other 96 percent is used by irrigated agriculture and supports nearly three quarters of irrigation nation-wide.2）

There are six governments with responsibili-ties in the Murray-Darling Basin, the national Commonwealth Government, the four states with territory in the catchment, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and South Aus-tralia, and the Australian Capital Territory which contains its largest urban centre, Can-berra. Until recently policy development and management was still mostly conducted at the state level with a number of functions coordi-nated centrally. Among the latter were agreements about the respective shares of flow between the states in the southern basin and responsibility for managing some of the salt impacts across borders caused by the agricul-tural development of the region since European settlement became intensive in the mid nineteenth century. Since the approval of the River Murray Waters Agreement in 1915, coordination has been achieved through a cen-tral administrative unit based on identical legislation passed in all parliaments. Under this arrangement decisions were made through a consensus orientated process which effectively gave each jurisdiction the power to veto any decision of which it disapproved. In the early 2000s after nearly a century of working through that consensus focused process there was a dramatic break when the national gov-ernment took control of high level policy for the MDB by passing the Commonwealth Wa-ter Act 2007.3） _{Under these new arrangements}

implementation is still the responsibility of the states which are expected to comply in return

for gaining access to funds through the Com-monwealth Government’s Water for the Future

program.4） _{The reform process now under way}

is testing the robustness of these new arrange-ments.

II

Agricultural and pastoral development in the southern part of the MDB has long been domi-nated by the state capital cities, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, creating three com-peting centres of economic activity. From the late nineteenth century to the middle decades of the twentieth, the three states established ir-rigation based communities along the rivers in their hinterlands and provided subsidized wa-ter and many other services to promote their growth. The placement of these communities and the policies used to promote them made sense to decision makers in the early twentieth century who were fostering state-based econo-mies often in direct competition with neighbouring states and their state capital cit-ies. From a national or basin-wide perspective in the twenty first century, however, many of these priorities are hard to defend. Rectifying those imbalances was the rationale for the Council of Australian Government’s National Competition Policy developed in the early 1990s.

During the past two or three decades, how-ever, there has been a steady shift in power and responsibility from the states to the national Commonwealth Government in relation to a range of matters affecting water management. For over a century irrigation development in the MDB has been primarily the responsibility of basin state governments, with each operating

2) Crabb, P, 1997, Murray-Darling Basin Resources, Murray-Darling Basin Commission, Canberra. 3) Australian Government, 2009, Water Act 2007, Commonwealth Parliament of Australia, Canberra.

4) Wong, P., 2008 April, Water for the Future, speech to the 4th Annual Australian Water Summit by the Minis-ter for Climate Change and WaMinis-ter, Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre.

with a high degree of autonomy within its ju-risdiction. This resulted in state-focused systems with different management arrange-ments, different types of water entitlements and different conceptions about the appropri-at e r e l appropri-ati o n s h i p b e t w e en i rr i g appropri-ati o n communities and governments. Some of the most distinctive features of water management in the MDB were established in the early years and have been since consolidated in ways that make change difficult by the development of stakeholder groups with strong commitment to the status quo.

This is also true of the water sharing agree-ment between the states. The River Murray Waters Agreement between the southern MDB states and the Commonwealth govern-ment was incorporated into legislation and passed by each of the four parliaments in 1914/15.5） _{It contained three main elements}

which in their fundamentals continue to this day. There was a program of engineering works planned as an integrated whole with building and operations to be the responsibility of the state within which they were constructed. Construction costs were to be shared near equally (later made equal) by the four govern-ments and operations and maintenance costs were to be the responsibility of each of the three states within their jurisdictions. Second, was the water sharing rules. After providing a defined monthly flow to South Australia (which would vary from month to month de-pending on the time of year) New South Wales and Victoria were to share the flow at Albury equally and have exclusive right to the water in their tributaries. A proportional share arrange-ment between the three States was agreed for times of drought. Third, a commission of four

members, one from each government chaired by the Commonwealth representative and sup-ported by a small full time secretariat, was established to oversee implementation of the works program and the water sharing arrange-ments.6）

By the 1970s and 80s, however, irrigation de-velopment was causing increasingly severe water salinity problems, particularly for South Australia the state at the end of the system which was also concerned about the water sup-ply security of its capital, Adelaide, and many of its other urban centres. Eventually in the mid 1980s the pressure resulted in a major revi-sion of the institutional arrangements to give emphasis to water quality and environmental concerns. The new arrangements were incorpo-rated in a revised MDB Agreement which for the first time included Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory although not as fully committed signatories. The key elements of the structure that resulted from the debates of the mid 1980s were the Murray-Darling Ba-sin Ministerial Council, the Community Advisory Committee to the Ministerial Coun-c i l , a n d t h e Mu r r a y - D a r l i n g B a s i n Commission. It inherited the staff of the River Murray Commission and expanded through the 1990s in response to the growing list of is-sues that came within the ambit of basin-wide management. The new structure brought to-gether a wider range of interests, especially environmental, and formally recognised the need for greater involvement of the communi-ty in the water reform process. Although it has proved difficult to make this expansion com-patible with the management cultures of the four well-established, state-based water man-agement systems the early years of the MDB

5) Australian Government, 1915, River Murray Waters Act 1915 (No. 8), Commonwealth Parliament of Austra-lia.

6) Clark, S., 1971, ‘The River Murray question Part II’ Melbourne University Law Review.

Initiative were marked by widespread enthusi-asm and considerable achievement.7）

III

By the early 2000s support for reform had dissipated and opposition had become more organised. Efforts to revive the process fo-cussed on the development of the National Water Initiative (NWI) which was approved by the Council of Australian Governments in June 2004.8） _{The NWI provided the policy}

agenda which was later incorporated in modi-fied form in the Water Act 2007. According to the NWI the tensions between the many dif-ferent demands that are placed on hydrological systems should be managed through the devel-opment of comprehensive water plans.9） _{It is}

through their preparation that the difficult is-sues involved in balancing the need for sustainability and the ambitions of production interests were to be resolved. The water plans are to include secure water access entitlements, statutory based planning, statutory provision for environmental and public benefit out-comes, plans for the restoration of over-a l l o c over-a t e d over-a n d s t r e s s e d s y s t e m s t o ‘environmentally sustainable levels of extrac-tion’, the removal of barriers to trade, clear assignment of risk for future changes in avail-able water, comprehensive and public water accounting, policies focused on achieving wa-ter efficiency and innovation, capacity to address emerging issues and many more ele-ments. They were to provide for ‘adaptive management of surface and groundwater sys-tems’ with their connectivity recognized where it is significant. In addition, water plans were to

take account of Indigenous issues by making arrangements for Indigenous representation in water planning ‘wherever possible’ and provi-sion for indigenous social, spiritual and customary objectives ‘wherever they can be de-veloped’. They should also include allowance for ‘the possible existence of native title rights to water in the catchment or aquifer area’.

The NWI stated repeatedly that the volume of flow needed to maintain environmental sus-tainability, at whatever level of modification has been defined as reasonable in the negotia-tions involved in the development of the relevant water plan, should be met first before allocations for extraction are determined. Much of the NWI focuses on the promotion of economic activity but there are many sec-tions that stated the principle that all water bodies, no matter what level of modification was accepted as appropriate, should be main-tained in or restored to an environmentally sustainable condition as the first priority. While this may appear surprising in light of the long standing focus of the states in promoting development and expansion it was a logical re-sult of a policy planning process focussed on the long term. It does not make sense for a na-tional policy aiming for a sustainable future to advocate anything less than the protection of the basic resource upon which all else depends. However, this has proved to be a radical propo-sition in the context of Australian water management and is still being contested in a number of ways.

IV

The national government takeover in 2007

7) Connell, D. (2007), Water Politics in the Murray-Darling Basin, The Federation Press, Sydney.

8) Council of Australian Governments. (2004), Inter-governmental Agreement on a National Water Initia-tive. Council of Australian Governments, Canberra.

9) Hamstead, M., Bladwin C., O’Keefe V. (2008), Water Allocation Planning in Australia — Current Practices and Lessons Learned. National Water Commission, Canberra.

was backed by the inducements to cooperation provided by the Water for the Future program

with its budget of $A12.9 billion over ten years. This included $5.8 billion for on-farm and in-frastructure projects and $A3.2 billion for the purchase of water for the environment. A key element of the Commonwealth Water Act 2007 was the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) which replaced the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. The MDBA is charged with developing and implementing a Basin Plan the key elements of which are defined in some detail in the legislation.10） _{The Basin Plan}

for the first time introduced an integrated comprehensive approach to managing the MDB’s water resources. Key elements of the plan are:

• sustainable limits for surface and ground-water;

• baswide environmental objectives in-cluding water quality and salinity targets; • rules for a Basin-wide water trading regime; • requirements for each of the four state sub-plans that will implement the Basin plan objectives; and

• measures that will improve security for wa-ter entitlement holders.

Central to the Basin Plan is a catchment wide ‘sustainable diversion limit’ based on di-version limits for the sub-basins. At the Basin-wide level there are plans for the environment, water quality and salinity. The Basin Plan iden-tifies key environmental assets (such as Ramsar wetlands) and core ecological functions that must be maintained. It is designed for a wide range of circumstances, as is appropriate for a highly variable climate, and identifies potential future risks such as climate change, bush fires

and new agricultural activities that are modify-ing patterns of rainfall run-off.

The Basin Plan is required to be based on the ‘best available science’ with recognition that this will evolve over time. An analysis of the so-cial and economic impacts of possible changes to allocations must also be included so that de-cisions about the final plan can take account of the expected impacts on communities. The limitation of the historical record as a guide to the future climate is recognized. Because it is accepted that the past is not a good guide for the future climate modeling will be used as the foundation upon which to develop future adaptive strategies. In addition, all the various plans and the Basin plan itself will be sub-ject to periodic review.

The sustainable diversion limit (SDL) upon which the Basin Plan is based is meant to rep-resent an environmentally sustainable level of take which, if exceeded, will compromise: (1) key environmental assets of the water

re-source; or

(2) key ecosystem functions of the water re-sources; or

(3) the productive base of the water resource; or

(4) key environmental outcomes of the water resource.

The ‘take’ or level of water extractions is al-lowed to vary from year to year depending on factors such as storage levels, expected inflows, groundwater levels, rates of recharge, and inter-ception activities such as new forest plantations. To ease the transition from histor-ical levels of allocation – under which extractions are judged to have grown to levels that are more than is sustainable – to the new regime established under the Basin Plan, a

tem-10) Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) 2010, Guide to the proposed Basin Plan, Murray-Darling Ba-sin Authority, Canberra.

porary diversion provision will be provided for the first five years of implementation. This transition is already under way. The Australian Government through its $A3.2 billion program of purchasing water for the environment from willing sellers at market prices has already ac-quired more than half of the water that has been targeted.

A crucial body created by the new arrange-ments is the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder (the CEWH). That organization is responsible for using the water gained through purchases, and some of the water gained through the federal-funded infrastruc-ture improvements, to achieve environmental objectives through a program of targeted wa-tering of wetlands and other sites of significance. The purchased water is being held as water entitlements with the same legal char-acteristics and levels of security as the water entitlements owned by irrigators. This will give greater protection to the environment than did the previous policy of reallocating water to the residual flow component left in the river after entitlements have been diverted. Under the earlier system during times of drought the in stream flow left after extractions was reduced to a greater extent than were entitlements owned by irrigators. This reflected one of the aims of river regulation in dry countries such as Australia which is to maintain supplies to irri-gation, industry and human consumption during what would otherwise be periods of low flow. This new policy, however, means that the traditional equation no longer works against the environment during dry times to the same extent as before.11）

The level of security for entitlement holders and the environment and assignment of risk is

a very significant issue given the predictions for a drier future in the southern Basin as a result of climate change. According to the Water Act, should these predictions be realized, the risk of lower water allocations to water entitlements will be borne by:

• water entitlement holders in the event of bushfires, drought or climate change; • a government if it is the result of a policy

change; or

• a combination of entitlement holders and governments if it is the product of an im-provement in knowledge about what is needed for environmental sustainability. Working within the framework established by the Basin Plan, the four basin states are re-quired to develop sub-plans for their sections of the MDB which will be subject to accredita-tion for consistency with the Basin Plan. This arrangement is meant to allow for flexibility to take account of the significant differences that exist between the various states. It also recog-nizes that most water management expertise relevant to each particular region resides with-in state government agencies.

States will retain control over their water re-sources, but will need to ensure that their water resource plans are consistent with the overall Basin Plan. The states and their subsidiary re-gional organizations will ultimately implement the Basin Plan through the water resource plans. The capacity of the Water ACT 2007 to

achieve its goals of ensuring ecological sustain-able development, depends on the effective interaction and consistent application of the Basin Plan and its interaction with state and regional water plans. The process of preparing the plan has involved considerable consultation

11) Connell, D., 2011, ‘The role of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder’, in Connell, D., Grafton, Q.R., (Eds) Basin Futures: water reform in the Murray-Darling Basin, ANU E-Press.

– albeit highly controlled – with the public and consideration of its potential impacts. As required by the Water Act 2007, professional

re-searchers were commissioned to prepare social and economic impact studies to accompany the final Basin Plan when it was submitted to the Australian Government for final approval. In addition, the MDBA’s Basin Community Committee had continuous detailed involve-ment in the preparation of the Basin Plan since it first began to be developed in early 2009. This group is a cross section of the community selected from all over the Basin and from dif-ferent stakeholder groups. Stakeholders will also be actively involved in the development of regional water plans that will need to be consis-tent with the Basin Plan.

One of the requirements of the Basin Plan is that it should promote water trading which has long been seen as the potential driver of change, a source of entrepreneurial energy that can be harnessed to promote water reform in the MDB. The underlying philosophy was first given official status in the water reform pro-gram approved by the Council of Australian Governments in 1994.12） _{That program put}

forward the principle that hydrological systems should first be restored to sustainability then trading in water entitlements should be used to maximize the social and economic benefits to be gained from what was left. The Water Act 2007 also assigns important monitoring and

auditing roles to national agencies such as the Bureau of Meteorology, the Australian Com-petition and Consumer Commission, the National Water Commission and the Murray Darling Basin Authority. Matters being moni-tored include environmental conditions, climate, water trading, water planning. The aim

is to improve the information and data base needed to make more effective decisions in terms of water planning, but substantial co-op-eration from state governments will be required for that to happen in practice.

V

The National Water Initiative and the Com-monwealth Water Act 2007 based upon it, were developed in the context of the National Competition Policy and reflected a changing relationship between governments, public wa-ter authorities and private wawa-ter users, principally irrigators, after more than a century of relative stability.13） _{For many decades the}

in-terests of governments and water users were similar. Governments used water as a tool to promote the growth of communities and there was little concern about environmental issues. During this period even though water entitle-ments were usually only vaguely defined from a legal perspective, governments worked closely with irrigation communities and there was lit-tle conflict. Irrigation development was less intensive than today so the reliability of supply was relatively high. Variations were usually the result of administrative decisions made in re-sponse to drought and so concerns about future supply and the decisions were generally accepted as sensible and necessary in the com-munities affected. In more recent times, however, this congruence of interests has bro-ken down. It was becoming widely recognized that the growth in diversions in the second half of the twentieth century was causing serious environmental problems and intensified com-petition between water users. As a result

12) Council of Australian Governments, 1994, COAG Communiqué meeting Feb 25th 1994. COAG, Canber-ra.

13) Painter, M., 1998, Collaborative federalism: Eco-nomic reform in Australia in the 1990s, Cambridge Uni-versity Press, Cambridge.

governments were being pressured to step back from promoting the interests of irrigators and instead reposition themselves so they can adju-dicate between competing stakeholders. That said, in practice, irrigators as a stakeholder group have continued to have no difficulty in having their views taken into account by policy makers.

VI

in the Murray-Darling Basin There appears to be a number of lessons re-garding the use of water markets in Australia that could be of wider relevance. First is that water markets are the creation of governments through which they achieve public policy ob-jectives. They are not an alternative to governments as some pro-market advocates seem to suggest. Participants in water markets make decisions within the public policy frame-work that government law and regulation put in place. However in general they are more likely to accept the consequences of their deci-sions than if governments directly impose a particular outcome. It seems that the sense of control and creativity fostered by this freedom, albeit conscribed, unleashes greater energy and imagination than comes forth under condi-tions of direct government command and control.

The operation of a water market in the Mur-ray-Darling Basin has also made it easier to move water back to the river and achieve envi-ronmental objectives than was the case in the past. Opponents to that realignment were pre-viously able to make their opposition very effective when proposals were assessed through

an administrative process that needed a high degree of community consensus to be political-ly viable. Now within a water market context all that is needed is a willing seller ready to re-spond to a government offer to purchase. Within such a commercial transaction the le-verage of opponents concerned about the impact on communities of water leaving the district is minimized. Some of the subtler is-sues are harder to judge, however. Ultimately water management in the MDB is concerned with satisfying more than just economic tar-gets. Environmental objectives are inherently vaguer and often more defuse than are eco-nomic costs and benefits. Concern for the environment and sustainability which has driv-en much of the water reform agdriv-enda in recdriv-ent decades, may struggle in the future to maintain its influence in a policy arena shaped increas-ingly by the culture of a strong water market with its emphasis on the need to demonstrate an economic return on investment.

VII

Has new public management, neoliberal ideas and the increasing role assigned to market forces increased the capacity of Australian soci-ety to manage climate change in the Murray-Darling Basin? The answer is complex. The development of the Basin Plan, the first at-tempt at comprehensive management in the MDB, can be attributed at least in part to a movement to a purchaser–provider arrange-ment for policy implearrange-mentation, an approach very much in keeping with new public manage-ment and market thinking. The rejection of the previous consensus orientated model made it easier to develop an overall plan that did not

need the agreement of all jurisdictions in the MDB, as before. This movement away from consensus was backed up by the use of water markets which have allowed individual irriga-tors much greater flexibility. It also provided new incentives to extract maximum the finan-cial benefit to be gained from every drop of water. This has encouraged innovation in crops and irrigation practices and also reduced water logging and irrigation induced salinisation. The benefits of the water market at the level of the individual and the overall economy were demonstrated dramatically during the Millen-nium Drought that affected the MDB for a number of years in the 2000s. Although water availability was very low in what was the worst drought since records began to be kept in the 1890s, economic returns for irrigation based activity stayed at round about pre-drought lev-els. Producers willing to pay higher prices caused water to move away from low value to high value activities. On the other hand, the stronger focus on water use efficiency reduced what are now termed return flows to the river system, a previously poorly documented but large contributor to the volumes of water avail-able to downstream users and the environment. The water market also created a new incentive to sell any water than would not be used. Previ-ously, such water would have remained in the river, providing significant benefits to the envi-ronment. The water market has also created new stresses between irrigators and their com-munities where previously there was a strong sense of shared destiny. In the communities in the southern basin that were originally created as irrigation settlements or which have expand-ed through irrigation as in the north, the movement of water entitlements out of the

dis-trict can threaten businesses and activities dependent on the size of the town. In this situ-ation non-irrigators get none of the benefits from the money paid for the water entitle-ments. Debates about such trends can seriously disrupt social cohesion in such communities.

For the environment there have also been significant benefits, at least in the short term, from the introduction of water markets. Since the 1980s there have been a number of deter-mined efforts by governments to shift water from agricultural production back to the rivers. But until water purchases were used to create an environmental water bank those efforts had little success. For the first time, as a result of the decision to source environmental water through the water market at commercial prices from willing sellers, a way has been found to re-claim a substantial percentage for the environment. That decision caused angst amongst those people who resented govern-ments paying large sums for water assets that had been handed out almost free to irrigators a few decades earlier in the form of water licens-es. But without that change in strategy it would not have been politically possible to regain a substantial volume of water for the environ-ment.

References

⦿Australian Government, 1915, River Murray Waters Act 1915 (No. 8), Commonwealth Parliament of Australia. ⦿Australian Government, 2009, Water Act 2007,

Com-monwealth Parliament of Australia, Canberra. ⦿Clark, S., 1971, ‘The River Murray question Part II’

Mel-bourne University Law Review.

⦿Connell, D. (2007), Water Politics in the Murray-Dar-ling Basin, The Federation Press, Sydney.

⦿Connell, D., 2011, ‘The role of the Commonwealth En-vironmental Water Holder’, in Connell, D., Grafton, Q.R., (Eds) Basin Futures: water reform in the Murray-Darling Basin, ANU E-Press.

⦿Council of Australian Governments, 1994, COAG Communiqué meeting Feb 25th 1994. COAG, Canber-ra.

⦿Council of Australian Governments. (2004), Intergov-ernmental Agreement on a National Water Initiative. Council of Australian Governments, Canberra. ⦿Crabb, P, 1997, Murray-Darling Basin Resources,

Mur-ray-Darling Basin Commission, Canberra.

⦿Hamstead, M., Bladwin C., O’Keefe V. (2008), Water Allocation Planning in Australia — Current Practices and Lessons Learned. National Water Commission, Canberra.

⦿Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) 2010, Guide to the proposed Basin Plan, Murray-Darling Basin Au-thority, Canberra.

⦿Painter, M., 1998, Collaborative federalism: Economic reform in Australia in the 1990s, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

⦿State of the Environment 2011 Committee (SOE 2011), Australian State of the Environment 2011,Independent Report to the Australian Government Minister for Sus-tainability, Environment, Water, Population and Com-munities. Canberra, DSEWPaC, 2011.

⦿Wong, P., 2008 April, Water for the Future, speech to the 4th Annual Australian Water Summit by the Min-ister for Climate Change and Water, Sydney Conven-tion and ExhibiConven-tion Centre.

Water Markets and the Murray-Darling Basin Plan

Daniel Connell

The Murray-Darling River Basin extends over more than a million square kilometers in the south-east corner of Australia. It contains most of the country’s irrigation and has been at the centre of the national debate about water man-agement reform for more than three decades. One of the most controversial issues has been the introduction of a catchment-wide water market. Critics argue that markets are strength-ening pressures for short-term economic development and making it increasingly diffi-cult to achieve more sustainable river management and adjust to climate change. But during the recent very severe millennium drought the water market allowed water to be moved fairly easily from low value agricultural uses to high value uses resulting in almost no overall economic loss. Water reform in the MDB has long been subject to intense conflict between the national government and the four state governments in the catchment (and be-tween the state governments against each other). The Australian national government is attempting to reshape the water governance framework through the introduction of a com-prehensive Basin Plan backed by a large funding package that includes the equivalent of approximately $3 billion US to purchase water entitlements to achieve environmental im-provements. The Basin Plan is designed to reverse over a century of development-induced decline and protect the MDB from the

pre-dicted impacts of climate change. While the Basin Plan falls short of its objectives in a num-ber of significant ways it is still a serious effort to implement sustainable river management at a catchment wide scale. As such it provides a case study of international significance for the long running debate about how irrigation can be made sustainable and compatible with the increasing pressure to improve riverine environ-ments.

Key words:- national government, Murray-D a r l i n g B a s i n P l a n , e nv i r o n m e n t a l sustainability, water reform, water markets.