Sustainable levels of extraction: National Water Commission position
May 2010
The National Water Initiative (NWI) requires all currently overallocated and overused surface and groundwater systems to be returned to environmentally sustainable levels of extraction. It also requires other less-stressed systems to be maintained at an environmentally sustainable level of use.
The National Water Commission's second biennial assessment, Australian water reform 2009, found that the central NWI requirement to make substantial progress by 2010 in dealing with all overallocated and overused systems will not be met. The Commission makes it clear that addressing overallocation therefore remains a central national challenge of water policy reform in Australia.
Future directions
- The Commission supports the development of national guidelines for water planning and management, particularly the clarification of the meaning of sustainable levels of extraction and other key concepts. It is now essential that jurisdictions speedily put these guidelines into practice.
- There is currently no public identification of systems that are overallocated or overused, and hence no baseline from which to measure progress in achieving sustainability. Consequently, the Commission has initiated work to develop and publish a national inventory of water-stressed aquatic ecosystems as a first step towards a national inventory of overallocated and overused systems.
- A mix of options should be considered to provide any additional water required to achieve the environmental outcomes established in water plans while minimising impacts on third party holders of water access entitlements. The Commission is developing a national report on environmental water rules and entitlements, their management, and their effectiveness in achieving environmental and other public benefit outcomes.
- Jurisdictions should ensure that environmental water entitlements enjoy at least the same level of security as consumptive water entitlements. If the level of security is reduced in exceptional circumstances, then the decision-making process should be evidence-based and transparent.
- Jurisdictions should provide environmental water managers with the necessary authority, freedom from conflicts of interest and resourcing to ensure that the sustainable levels of extraction and transparent environmental watering objectives agreed in water plans are achieved. Environmental water should be included in water accounts.
- Scientific knowledge about the environmental consequences of different water allocation decisions is imperfect and the Commission will play a role in both ensuring that this knowledge base is improved and made accessible, and in developing minimum acceptable levels of scientific input to water plans.
- The Commission considers that these actions, backed up by strong commitment from jurisdictions, can lead to the identification of key environmental assets and ecosystem functions, the provision of water regimes for protection of these assets and functions, and the return of overallocated and overused system to environmental sustainability.
Position statement for download
Sustainable levels of extraction: National Water Commission position (316KB)