Boost partnerships with irrigation sector for environmental water delivery, to public and private lands

Expansion of partnerships with IIOs and private landholders better realises Integrated Water Resource Management – i.e. the interconnected management of land, water and related resources, including people. Specifically, it enables environmental water to be best used, by reaching sites further into the landscape, and accessing sites on private land. It also provides a climate change adaptation measure, as a pathway to water sites that may receive less natural inundations with a changing climate altering flow regimes. To demonstrate what’s possible, the proposed Murray Reconnected Floodplains project – by Murray Irrigation Limited (a large private irrigation water delivery company, delivering water to 2,124 landholdings across 724,00 ha in the Southern Basin) - provides one case study. The Murray Irrigation water delivery system is geographically placed to deliver targeted environmental water to thousands of hectares of rivers, creeks and wetlands that connect to the Murray River. The Project seeks to upgrade existing water delivery infrastructure (escapes, access structures and fence crossings) within the region’s rivers, creeks and wetlands to create a large scale connected ecosystem. The expected outcomes include delivering 600 gigalitres of water for environmental outcomes alongside on-ground initiatives, to rehabilitate and rejuvenate: • 2,000 on-farm private wetlands (54,000 ha wetland area), • 2,000km of riparian systems (20,000 ha of riparian beds), and • 74,000 hectares of floodplain ecosystems. Murray Irrigations modernised supply network will enable precise control and measurement of water, enabling targeted environmental outcomes and demonstrating full accountability of public water – including to target at-risk ecosystems. This provides a modern, precision method of environmental watering. This also enables landholders and people within the community to be actively involved in environmental management, creating a sense of ownership, collaboration, and participation – key to overcoming trust deficits, and rebuilding confidence in water management. Similar initiatives to this case study could occur for other IIOs and private landholdings. The extent of what’s possible cannot be underestimated. Within the NSW Basin alone, the extensive network of irrigation channels across IIOs spans over 6000 km to service a delivery area of approximately 1.8 million ha, covering not just agricultural land, but important environmental assets too. This is in addition to the many private landholders outside these IIO footprints, such as private diverters. Through effective partnerships, landscape-level change can be achieved. This action primarily targets SDG 6.5. In the Murray-Darling Basin, significant water reforms have occurred over recent decades – including establishing Sustainable Diversion Limits (with total diversions for agriculture, town water supplies and other industries combined now just 28% of inflows), through the recovery of 1 in 3 litres of previous irrigation water being transferred to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. Following these water management reforms, the next steps need to be on the integrated components - i.e. the related land and other resources (people) to optimise the water management outcomes. Furthermore, this commitment contributes to SDG 6.b - this participatory approach not only enables better environmental outcomes, but contributes to rebuilding confidence and trust amongst communities through their direct involvement.