Heritage Rivers - protection for freshwater resources in a flurry of natural resource management reforms

摘要

Freshwater is essential for human life. The water resources and their dependent ecosystems in New South Wales and across Australia are severely degraded from decades of mismanagement. This is now well recognised by governments, who are, collectively, selecting tools from their policy tool boxes and setting forth with water reform initiatives, seeking to halt degradation and repair degraded systems. However, degradation of water resources is continuing unabated. Previous attempts to address the causes are not yet promising real success and it is clear we need a new way of managing water use. Governments and policy makers, succumbing to obligations related to economic management, appear to be vesting their faith in the market and on community consensus to deliver the environmental outcomes needed to save our rivers and support an ecologically sustainable society and economy. The market must be used only as a servant and not a master, particularly in the face of scientific uncertainty. Community consensus must be bound by greater commitment to the conservation of biodiversity as a priority. Freshwater ecosystems are under-represented in the State's network of protected areas and there have been recent calls for undamaged rivers in New South Wales to be permanently protected. Australia is committed to achieving ecologically sustainable development and is in a flurry of natural resource management reform. The concept of Heritage Rivers is ripe for the taking. Some of the legislative and policy bones are even there. But there are inherent challenges for Governments weighing up the environmental, social and economic spheres of water management and we are a long way from having a full bodied, comprehensive, adequate and representative system of Heritage Rivers.