Research

INTRODUCTION

Climate change is increasing extreme weather conditions, causing devastating floods and droughts in many regions. More intense precipitation increases flooding, while many mid-latitude regions are experiencing severe water stress (Palmer et al. 2008). Water resource managers can no longer operate within a paradigm of stationarity (Milly et al. 2008, Vaze et al. 2010).

The changing conditions challenge conventional approaches to water governance (Alexandra 2021). While climate adaptation is becoming accepted as a new global norm in the water sector, it is unclear whether policies are symbolic or substantive commitments to systemic change (Dupuis 2018, Schoenefeld et al. 2022). The adaptive governance literature calls for more empirical research on policy practice because it is unclear which policy and institutional settings enable or constrain adaptive capacities (Chaffin et al. 2014, Karpouzoglou et al. 2016, Schoenefeld et al. 2022). The need to evaluate adaptation policies is pressing, with intensifying extreme events (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2021).

Our research examines policy and governance arrangements in Australia’s Murray-Darling basin and explores their capacity to foster climate adaptation. We review water and climate policies and analyze their framings, logic, concepts, and discourses. Our study departs from more instrumental policy studies by adopting a cultural-political economy perspective to understand policy formation and execution, including how power, political agency, and policy norms combine to produce specific outcomes (Mollinga 2019). Evaluating policies is not straightforward because adaptation concepts continue to mutate (Head 2010), with policy discourses evolving, often recycling vague, discursive elements from previous eras (Alexandra and Rickards 2021).

Here, we use policy discourse analysis methods that enable appreciation of the messy and complex interactions that make up environmental policy processes (Hajer and Versteeg 2005, Isaac and de Loë 2022). We focus on public policies because choices about their framing, design, and implementation significantly influence adaptation (Jensen et al. 2020). These policies reflect the outcomes of the discursive contestations involved in environmental and social change (Eriksen et al. 2015, Nightingale et al. 2020). Particular discourses bias the conceptualization of policy problems and their solutions (Hajer and Versteeg 2005) and determine what is made problematic or unproblematic (Bacchi 2009). For example, how climate vulnerability is defined determines the adaptation options that are considered feasible, developed further, and adopted (O’Brien et al. 2007).

For more than two decades in the governance of the Murray-Darling basin, governments recognized the significance of climate risks, assessed impacts and vulnerabilities, and tentatively sought to develop and implement feasible and politically acceptable policy options (Alexandra 2023a). The public policies we examine are the outcomes of extended and divisive national debates. We aim to understand the current Murray-Darling basin water governance arrangements and the framings from which they emanate. We begin by presenting a summary of the background and context. We outline the mixed methods used before presenting the results. We then discuss the implications of the research, presenting two provisional archetypes of climate adaptive water policy.

WATER GOVERNANCE ARRANGEMENTS IN THE MURRAY-DARLING BASIN

Climatic conditions and water reform

During the first decades of the 21st century, unprecedented climatic conditions, including droughts, fires, and floods, severely affected many Australian regions, including the Murray-Darling basin (Commonwealth of Australia 2022). However, Australia’s climate and water policies were characterized by divisive and polarized debates and intense politicking (MacNeil 2021, Samnakay 2022a). The severe social, environmental, and economic impacts of the Millennium Drought (1996–2010) drew attention to water insecurity and climate vulnerability, catalyzing numerous policy initiatives (Alexandra and Rickards 2021, Bell 2022). The Commonwealth government intervened despite state governments having constitutional responsibility for water resources in Australia’s federated system (Connell 2007, Alexandra and Rickards 2021). This intervention marked a significant shift away from cooperative federalism, which is the established approach to national policy reforms (Painter 1996). For water policy, the Council of Australian Governments’ 1993 Water Resource Policy and 1994 National Competition Policy provided a framework for national cooperation (Dare and Evans 2017). During the Millennium Drought, with heightened concerns about water security, the Council of Australian Governments adopted the National Water Initiative (Council of Australian Governments 2004), reaffirming the 1993–1994 Council of Australian Governments’ principles, combined with new commitments to improve water governance.

The Commonwealth Water Act, Murray-Darling Basin Plan, and subordinate water plans

In 2007, the Commonwealth Government responded to the deepening drought crisis by legislating Australia’s first Commonwealth Water Act (Commonwealth 2007). This legislation introduced more centralized planning (Dare and Evans 2017) in combination with AUD$13 billion for buying water entitlements from irrigators and upgrading irrigation infrastructure (Crase and O’Keefe 2009). Through legislative and fiscal power, the Commonwealth intervened in Murray-Darling basin water governance (Grafton 2019). A central requirement of the Water Act was a Murray-Darling Basin Plan that limits consumptive water extractions. The Water Act requires that state governments develop water resource plans consistent with the Basin Plan (Hart 2016). The Murray-Darling Basin Authority oversees the development, implementation, evaluation, and periodic revision of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and accredits the water resource plans.

The Murray-Darling basin drains parts of Queensland, New South Wales (including the Australian Capital Territory), Victoria, and South Australia, with water management across the catchment subjected to Commonwealth, state, basin, sub-catchment, and local policies. To inform our research, a representative sample of policies drawing from hierarchies of water (Fig. 1) and climate policies (Fig. 2) were selected and analyzed for their documentation of climate change considerations.

Climate change and water planning

Water resource planning in the Murray-Darling basin generally uses historic climate and flow records collected since the late 1890s. Although deep variability is recognizable over this period, water planners assumed, until recently, a relatively stable range of variation (Prosser et al. 2021). For example, to develop the 2012 Basin Plan, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority relied on long-term averages of the instrumental rainfall record and did not use any scenarios or projections of a changing climate (Alexandra 2020). However, the Water Act requires that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority assess climate risks and develop strategic responses with defensible scientific foundations (Alexandra 2023a,b). Like many water policy documents, the Water Act (Commonwealth 2007) and the Basin Plan (Australian Government 2012) explicitly recognize climate risks. However, it is unclear whether the Basin Plan adopts adaptive policies (Neave et al. 2015) or whether governments avoided tough policy decisions, as noted in contesting literature (Pittock et al. 2015, Swirepik et al. 2016, Government of South Australia 2019, Owens 2022).

METHODS AND APPROACH

Policy document analysis

We used a mixed-methods interpretive approach to understand climate adaptation in Australia’s Murray-Darling basin as follows (Table 1). We first undertook an analysis of 24 water and 16 climate policy documents intersecting with Murray-Darling basin governance. Representative samples of Commonwealth-, basin-, state-, and catchment-scale policies were selected (Figs. 1 and 2). Our intention in this analysis was not to undertake a forensic, quantitative examination of water and climate policy documents. Rather, we aimed to establish that water governance policies clearly state that water managers and planners should consider climate change in their management of water resources. We also examined the context in which climate change is mentioned in these documents.

We used NVIVO software to analyze the selected documents, searching for the target terms “climate change,” “climate,” or “climatic” in water policy documents. We searched for the target term “water” in climate policies. The target terms and their adjoining text were selected and coded thematically to ascertain the context in which the target terms were used (Tables 2 and 3). For example, if “climate change” was used in the context of adapting to climate change, the term and surrounding text were coded to the “adaptation” theme. The selected text was coded to multiple contexts if it covered several themes. We determined coherence by qualitative assessments of the similarities and differences in framing climate change as “adaptation” and “resilience.” We used these themes to infer coherence because they were the most frequently used.

Additionally, we inferred coherence by assessing the frequency of use of each context by each jurisdiction (e.g., the Federal and Victorian governments both framed climate policies as environmental protection). In this way, we constructed a thematic structure to interpret how water policy documents treat climate change and how climate policies treat water.

Policy interpretation

We then performed an interpretive analysis of three independently conducted interdisciplinary water research projects conducted between 2016 and 2022, which identify the prevailing cultural-political economy. These projects undertook document analysis and interviews with policy practitioners and researchers involved in Murray-Darling basin reforms. The first study interpreted the treatment of climate risks in the development of the Basin Plan (Alexandra 2020, 2021). This study triangulated a comprehensive review of policy documents with first-hand accounts from 30 senior policymakers, advocates, and researchers. The second project undertook a comparative, empirical analysis of 20 national environment and sustainability policies, including the National Water Initiative (Samnakay 2021, 2022b). Critical reviews of policy evaluations undertaken by independent agencies and policy experts underpin the studies, accompanied by semi-structured interviews with nine senior public policy officials and policy analysts. These studies identify dominant policy framings, problematizations, and policy processes within the context of contested federal-state responsibilities. The third study draws on qualitative interviews with 40 experts from government agencies, academics, industry groups, and environmental organizations. These interviews focused on how Murray-Darling basin reforms could integrate, anticipate, and adapt to climate change. The three studies were conducted separately over time, with potential for some replication of interview participants, although each study’s research objectives were independent of the others’.

A theoretically informed enquiry drawing from Bacchi (2009), Dewulf (2013), Remling (2018a), and Mollinga (2019) serve to frame enquiries to inform the findings as follows:

1. What assumptions, ideas, and beliefs influence the policy options selected?
2. How and by whom are policy agendas set, and how does this process affect policy development and implementation?
3. What socially accepted norms and institutionalized “rules of the game” underpin the dominant policy discourse?
4. What is included in and excluded from problem framing; Are there simplifications, reductions, or omissions, and how are counterframes or divergent discourses handled?
5. Are there consistencies (equivalence) or inconsistencies (differences) between and across policies when compared vertically (local to national) and horizontally (across equivalent scales)?

The interview analysis of the three published studies involved qualitative coding of transcripts using an adaptive theory approach (Layder 1998), with inductive coding of “orienting concepts” within the respective inquiries. Initial orienting concepts were selected to guide data analysis and subsequently finalized, and are reflected as subheadings in Results. This approach is consistent with theoretically informed yet emergent analysis (MacFarlane and O’Reilly-de Brún 2012), guided by the data present in interviews, rather than a deductive approach that seeks to confirm or refute a hypothesis. After the NVIVO-supported document analysis, we revisited the interview data to provide additional insight into the policies under review. This iteration provided perspectives on the unwritten subtext and political context of policies. The theoretically informed questions articulated above guided this secondary analysis, providing a consistent framework for analyzing inputs 1–4 (Table 1).

Our empirical analysis informs the current cultural-political economy archetype defined as an administratively rational approach to policy making. We reviewed the adaptive governance literature to present an alternative dynamic archetype symptomatic of adaptive governance attributes (Table 4). Our professional experience within national policy and research agencies complements these studies. Combining these bodies of research brings a broad overview and a sound empirical basis for interpreting the policy discourse.

RESULTS

We first present results from the NVIVO-supported document analysis of water policies (Table 2) and climate policies (Table 3). Our interpretation of the significant findings of the published data then follows.

Analysis of water and climate policy documents

The term “climate change” is frequently referred to within Commonwealth and state water policies. The five most common contextual themes across all policies are “adaptation,” “resilience,” “water security,” “risk,” and “consideration in decision-making” (Table 2). Commonwealth and state policies demonstrate coherence, with strong vertical integration due to the National Water Initiatives national framework and the Water Act and Basin Plan codifying the National Water Initiative principles in water resource plans (Samnakay 2022b).

Climate policies are not vertically aligned due to the absence of any national framework on climate change. The National Climate Change Adaptation Framework (Council of Australian Governments 2007) initiated some national policy coordination but stalled due to Australia’s highly divisive climate politics (Wilkinson 2020, MacNeil 2021), and state policies are generally more ambitious than national policies (Mummery and Mummery 2019). Water risks are identified chiefly in the context of “water infrastructure,” “water security,” and “water quality.” The emphasis on infrastructure reflects a dominance of supply-side measures to framings of water security.

The analysis confirms that Australia’s water policies require governments to consider climate change in water planning processes. This recognition has particularly increased in recent decades. For example, older legislation such as Victoria’s 1989 Water Act and 1994 Catchment and Land Protection Act predate widely held concerns about climate change and are silent on climate change considerations. In contrast, the more recent Water Act (2007) refers to climate change 13 times, and the New South Wales Water Management Act and Queensland Water Act, both dating from 2000, mention climate change 11 and 6 times, respectively.

The NVIVO analysis indicates that all basin governments recognize climate risks to water security and the environment. However, Commonwealth policies have emphasized risk and resilience, rarely using the term “adaptation.” In contrast, state policies use “adaptation” frequently. We next interpret the policy settings and the cultural-political economy of water governance.

Statist hydro-economic planning approaches, preferencing markets, and the subsidization of private good

The water and climate policy documents focus strongly on climate risks to water security. This focus positions water as an essential service, with climate change threatening urban and regional communities and industries. Many policy responses focus on the infrastructure needed for supply-side security. However, these “hard” adaptation measures risk lock-in (De Grandpré et al. 2022), and broader policy reforms are needed to manage climate-driven water insecurity (Government of South Australia 2019, Productivity Commission 2021).

Water security concepts permeate water and climate policies. However, climate risk and water security are meta-narratives open to broad interpretations (Alexandra and Rickards 2021). In the Murray-Darling basin, climate risks are conceived of in administratively rationalist ways, defined as manageable problems using existing policy settings, including through strengthening environmental flows, efficiency measures, and water markets (Neave et al. 2015), or in techno-rationalist ways, perceived primarily as requiring scientific insights or technological developments to support incremental adaptation measures (Wyborn et al. 2023).

Earlier Council of Australian Government and National Water Initiative frameworks established the policy norms and legitimize neoliberal principles (Baldwin et al. 2019). These established policies focus on lifting economic productivity through corporatizing the public sector, “liberating” industry from excessive regulation, and establishing effective markets for solving environmental problems. Water reforms give effect to the ideology that markets allocate resources efficiently, with statist governance arrangements prevailing (Reis 2019).

The reform outcomes were shaped by vested interests, particularly by irrigators (Crase and O’Keefe 2009, Marshall and Alexandra 2016, Alexandra and Rickards 2021). Irrigators strategically resisted and undermined policy reforms with appeals to water security as justification for further subsidies (Alexandra and Rickards 2021, Taylor 2021). Reform objectives of ending subsidies and requiring users to pay for infrastructure were forfeited, with enormous subsidies for water infrastructure being provided that perpetuated historical approaches to hydro-economic developmentalism (Crase and O’Keefe 2009, Marshall and Alexandra 2016, Alexandra and Rickards 2021). Governments subsidized irrigation infrastructure with unsubstantiated claims of public good (Samnakay 2022a) in the era of “saved water” (Jackson and Head 2020).

More recent claims of climate change-induced droughts on water scarcity have not accounted for the effects of increasing water extractions in the Darling (Barka) River system (Grafton et al. 2013, 2022), diverting policy attention from the social and environmental impacts of overextraction. Alexandra and Rickards (2021) argue that subsidizing irrigation was the primary purpose of the Commonwealth intervention, given the quantity of funds expended. Grafton and Williams (2020) state that successful rent-seeking in Australia’s water sector is a form of corruption because policy decisions benefit selected interests rather than the public interest.

The dominance of irrigation remained unchallenged (Colloff et al. 2021) because of a persistent yet unspoken social compact about governments’ role in providing abundant, cheap, and legally secure water to underpin regional economic development through irrigation (Jackson and Head 2020). This compact arises from Australia’s hydro-economic development to boost agriculture and grow regional economies, including governments willingly subsidizing agriculture during droughts (Botterill 2016, Samnakay 2023).

Climate risks are narrowly defined as a water security threat

The National Water Initiative assigns climate risks to water entitlement holders who “bear the risks of any reduction or less reliable water allocation, ... arising from reductions to the consumptive pool as a result of: (i) seasonal or long-term changes in climate” (Council of Australian Governments 2004:8 S48). The National Water Initiative differentiates between reductions to entitlements arising from climate change and reductions from policy changes, with the latter triggering compensation. For the 2012 Basin Plan, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority decided not to attribute any reduction in the consumptive pool to climate change, meaning that all adjustments were attributed to policy changes (Owens 2022) so that governments bore all adjustment costs.

The Water Act and Basin Plan replicate the National Water Initiative’s risk allocation clauses (Commonwealth 2007). These clauses define climate change as a future risk to entitlement security and reliability (Alexandra 2023a) within the framework provided by the securitization of water rights (Alexandra and Rickards 2021). The securitization and water market reforms enabled the reallocation of water for consumptive and environmental uses (Grafton 2019). Water markets are promoted as the answer to the problems of inefficient allocation and climate adaptation (Alexandra and Rickards 2021), dismissive of the limitations of water markets and the influence of agricultural trade on water demand (Garrick et al. 2022). However, in practice, the market reforms may reduce adaptive capacity by concentrating water resources in fewer hands, disenfranchising many stakeholders, and deepening mistrust in governments (Alston and Whittenbury 2011).

Weak directives to incorporate climate change in decision-making

Notably, the frequency of a term’s usage in policy does not translate into commitments to effective or substantive reforms (Pittock et al. 2015, Government of South Australia 2019, Alexandra 2021). The majority of water policies analyzed emphasize the need to consider climate change in decision-making. However, they provide little guidance on how it should be done. Water agencies such as the Murray-Darling Basin Authority express concern about scientific uncertainties, emphasizing the need for proof before revising water plans (Alexandra 2021). These positions reflect the political pressure for scientific certainty and the tendency to politicize uncertainty to confuse or delay action or justify inaction (Scoones and Stirling 2020). The emphasis on uncertainty supported assumptions that reducing levels of water consumption should be delayed because of the substantial economic impacts. The search for certainty is elusive.

Ultimately, water plans must be formulated with uncertainty about the climatic conditions that will prevail over any planning period (Alexandra 2023a). Incorporating climate change in water planning requires consideration of long-term trends, including the projection of future climates with major reductions in the water supply. These reductions will necessitate transformation in the underlying economic basis of many regional communities. Such significant changes require more than “consideration of climate change in decision-making” or simply inserting climate information into water plans. Instead, fundamental redesigns of allocation frameworks are needed to ensure they are adaptive to the changing climate (Alexandra 2023a). This imperative is evidenced by a 2021 court case in the New South Wales Land and Environment Court (Nature Conservation Council of NSW v. Minister for Water, Property and Housing), which argues that the New South Wales government breached the New South Wales Water Management Act 2000 by failing to take climate change impacts into account in relation to approving the Border Rivers Water Sharing Plan.

Water governance relies on models, targets, and standards divorced from the socio-political context

The Water Act (Commonwealth 2007) adopted the National Water Initiative’s principles but used Commonwealth law to centralize power (Dare and Evans 2017). The Basin Plan is a statutory instrument that prescribes planning and accounting methodologies for volumetric extraction limits (Commonwealth 2012). Target setting and compliance depend on hydrological modeling, but enforcement frameworks are vague and inconsistent (Chipperfield and Alexandra 2023). Regional-scale water resource planning is a prescribed set of planning operations that must conform to targets and standards determined by the Basin Plan (Alexandra 2019).

The prescriptive nature of the Water Act, the Basin Plan, and the water resource plan accreditation requirements dictate the nature and scope of regional water plans. Water planning is a top-down, technocratic process conducted by public officials, with limited considerations of the social planning contexts or social impacts of resource allocation decisions (Alston and Whittenbury 2011, Jackson and Head 2020, Sefton et al. 2020, Ford et al. 2023). Many policy documents reflect this approach, defining climate “adaptation” as simply adjusting water use and management rather than any broader societal and regional adaptation. Water planning only marginally integrates with regional development, agricultural or industrial policy that also shapes water use outcomes. This narrow scope ignores many human dimensions of governing water in a changing climate. Water governance decisions therefore empower technocrats who “know water,” and disempower those who “hold beliefs” about water, in particular First Nations peoples who conceptualize water as a living being (Laborde and Jackson 2022).

Focusing only on volumetric water policy levers will not drive adaptation to uncertain water futures in the Murray-Darling basin. Target-driven governance models and the vertical planning hierarchy constrains regional policy innovations. However, regional-scale innovation and community participation can catalyze transformative change (Jensen et al. 2020) and should be encouraged to handle emerging problems (Sefton et al. 2020).

Climate change is a multilevel governance and integration challenge (Jensen et al. 2020). However, policy centralization and neoliberalization silenced diverse voices and prevented the establishment of networked, participatory governance models (Alston and Whittenbury 2011). The current managerialist approaches limit systemic changes to governance processes and structures, constraining polycentric governance and centralizing control (Bell 2022). Effective and adaptive governance relies on polycentric characteristics, multiple centres of authority, and mechanisms for coordination that can increase adaptive capacity, learning, and flexibility (Marshall et al. 2013, Bell 2022, Pollard et al. 2023).

Water policies embed the myth of optimization

State and Commonwealth water policies demonstrate a strong coherence in their use of “resilience” as an outcome, for example, “water-dependent ecosystems are resilient” to climate change. We attribute this ecological framing of resilience, as opposed to social-economic resilience, to the Water Act and Basin Plan being responses to the environmental degradation of aquatic habitats during the “Millennium Drought” (2001–2009).

Many environmental policies emphasize the need to balance environmental protection and ecological resilience with economic and social outcomes (Samnakay 2022b). The National Water Initiative and the Water Act (Commonwealth 2007) define their objectives as “optimizing” social, economic, and environmental outcomes. The pursuit of optimization suggests that technocratic planning that draws on econometric expertise can determine optimal solutions. Optimization ideals and methods depoliticize and disguise the deep contestations about policy decisions that reflect different claimants’ priorities and values.

Since the gazetting of the Basin Plan in 2012, the basin states, excluding South Australia, have actively resisted returning water to the environment, with recovery toward the 2750 GL target stalling at approximately 2000 GL (Pittock 2019). The Commonwealth government, under the Liberal National Party coalition, capped entitlement buybacks, mandating that environmental water recovery must come from infrastructure upgrades, despite buybacks being more cost-effective (Grafton 2019). The political rationales for ending buybacks were the assumed social and economic impacts in irrigation regions.

In 2022, Australia’s newly elected Labor government supported resuming entitlement buybacks. This swing demonstrates that major political parties hold significant differences about the best way to achieve water recovery and the objectives of the Basin Plan (Samnakay 2022a). This lack of political alignment demonstrates that water allocation decisions diverge depending on Ministerial preferences and political agendas. In a changing climate, we are misguided to seek optimal policy settings, after which governments can “set and forget.” Instead, we need governance and allocation frameworks that embed flexibility and adaptability (Alexandra 2023b).

The water policy contestations during the Millennium Drought indicate that water scarcity intensifies water politics and induces more avid rent-seeking (Crase and O’Keefe 2009, Grafton and Williams 2020). Fears that climate change will reduce the pool of available water increases the contestations between claimants who appeal to value-laden concepts such as nation-building, drought-proofing, environmental restoration, and water security (Alexandra and Rickards 2021). Water policies will always be contested, with sound policy development occurring through contestable processes. Therefore, adjusting policies through democratic, contestable, and discursive processes is central to the capacity for adaptation.

DISCUSSION

Wicked problems and depoliticization

In 2007, the Australian government defined climate change and water reform as wicked problems (Australian Public Service Commission 2007). This recognition coincided with the approval of the Commonwealth Water Act (2007), a first for a national government. Our analysis finds that policy documents attempt to tame these complex problems, however, downplaying or sanitizing the potential for climate-driven crises preferencing “soft” options rather than hard commitments.

Although water reforms in the Murray-Darling basin were influenced by severe droughts (Bell 2022) widely defined as crises, policy documents tend to downplay the prospect of future crises. Further, climate risks are rarely treated as complex problems requiring social mobilization and integrated responses but, instead, convey administratively rational problem-solving approaches. This managerialist stance downplays the potential for the changing climate to alter radically the economic, social, and environmental basis of entire regions. Reframing the discourse to emphasize regional economic adjustment, disaster prevention, and significant adjustments to social-ecological relationships rarely feature in water policy documents. This narrow scope demonstrates that water policy and planning is a technocratic process, and ideas about justice and transformative change remain largely taboo.

The documents we reviewed rarely articulated soft adaptation mechanisms, which focus on social connections, social justice, and diverse values, rules, and knowledge, that should be matters of central concern to effective climate adaptation (Gorddard et al. 2016, Lukasiewicz and Baldwin 2017, Schlosberg et al. 2017, Jackson and Head 2020). A recent analysis of inquiries into Murray-Darling basin water reform found that most recommendations focus on incremental improvement, neglecting the substantive changes needed for just climate adaptation (Wyborn et al. 2023). Many policy documents express faith in existing policy mechanisms, suggesting that necessary changes can be achieved by environmental watering, increasing water-use efficiency, refining water markets, adopting hard engineering solutions, and revising volumetric allocations (Neave et al. 2015). Hence, these policies do not prepare or mobilize regional communities for the changes needed to handle uncertain climate futures. Current governance regimes in the Murray-Darling basin limit community participation and marginalize social-ecological dimensions of policy development.

Such technocratic approaches depoliticize climate adaptation. Remling (2018b) argues that this depoliticization works to assert that the current policy agenda is indisputable, “masking alternative interpretations of what it might mean to do adaptation.” Depoliticizing adaptation invites technocratic and managerial solutions by framing the problems “as an environmental (rather than a potentially controversial social or political) problem” (Remling 2018b). This depoliticization obscures deeper truths about the contingency of reality and the political nature of policy choices.

Administratively rational or dynamic adaptation archetypes

Adapting to climate change is multidimensional and context specific, requiring changes in social-ecological systems and the analytical approaches to understanding these systems (Karpouzoglou et al. 2016, Colloff et al. 2021). There are many factors involved, including historical contingencies, political dynamics, cultural diversity, community mobilization and policy vision, and reflexive engagement in preferable futures (Smith and Stirling 2010, Eriksen et al. 2015, Gorddard et al. 2016, Colloff et al. 2021).

Water and climate governance in the Murray-Darling basin are symptomatic of administrative rationalism, which O’Brien et al. (2007) categorize as focused on “outcome vulnerability.” These approaches rely on linear conceptualizations of problems and their solutions in policies with narrowly specified outcomes (O’Brien et al. 2007). They entrench existing power relationships and constrain adaptation by adopting narrow, instrumentalist approaches to complex problems (Eriksen et al. 2015, Jensen et al. 2020, Nightingale et al. 2020).

In contrast, a “contextual vulnerability” approach (O’Brien et al. 2007) recognizes multiple, dynamic, socio-political processes. Reliance on the latter approach can degenerate into excessive relativism (Latour 2018). The former approach generates risks of technical entrapment, from which we cannot hope to solve complex societal problems (Nightingale et al. 2020). Likewise, Gorddard et al. (2016) define two contrasting perspectives: the “decision-making perspective” and the “decision-context perspective.” The former focuses on making and acting upon reasoned choices (agency and authority), whereas the latter focuses on understanding and strengthening societal processes and structures of decision-steering. The former views values, rules, and knowledge as independent variables, whereas the latter treats them as interacting factors that establish and change the decision context. For example, applying this approach to managing water scarcity in the Murray-Darling basin necessitates consideration of the dynamic political, institutional, economic, and social processes. These approaches embed numerous assumptions, frames, and definitional boundaries about policy development (Gorddard et al. 2016, Nightingale et al. 2020).

Indicators for archetypes

Drawing on our empirical analysis and the adaptive governance scholarship, we offer some indicators of “administratively rational” archetypes currently operating in the Murray-Darling basin and suggest additional indicators of more “dynamic socio-political” archetypes, which can foster adaptive responses (Table 4). These indicators emerge from an amalgam of co-constituted factors (problem definition, governance logic, and dominant policy framings) and sets of assumptions and unstated norms that shape how policy is conceived and implemented. These factors determine how climate change is conceived, policy instruments are selected, knowledge is used and legitimized, and governance arrangements are deployed.

The archetypes embody different styles of governance and are proposed tentatively as a potential starting point for assessing the capacity of water governance regimes to engage with climate adaptation. The indicators developed for the dynamic socio-political categorization were derived from diverse theoretical inputs and are yet to be tested empirically. These indicators are provisional but may prove useful in informing future research and policy experimentation in different policy contexts. They have the potential to contribute to empirical assessments of adaptation options in development, to evaluate policy implementation, or to determine the capacity of different policy settings to facilitate the socioeconomic transitions required for climate change.

CONCLUSION

Climate adaptation presents a significant and ongoing challenge to water governance regimes worldwide. Our analysis of water and climate policies indicates that current governance arrangements in Australia’s Murray-Darling basin are managerialist and technocratic; they attempt to sanitize risks and tame complex problems. This research indicates that most Murray-Darling basin water policies embedded neoliberal principles due to their origins in the microeconomic reforms of the early 1990s, when climate change was less pressing. However, they also continue the trajectory of irrigation-based developmentalism and administratively rational approaches to environmental management. As a result, adaptation approaches in Murray-Darling basin water policies tend to have a narrow focus, simplifying complex social-ecological problems and sanitizing future crises, despite recent climatic conditions providing evidence of the impacts of climatic extremes. Governments appear unable or unwilling to tackle the hard commitments needed for proactive adaptation. Further, there is an unwillingness to explore transformative solutions; instead, most policies indicate that governments can manage climate impacts through extant policies and gradual adjustments. Those who want alternative governance options to be explored need to pressure governments to broaden their approaches and actively engage communities in investigating different water futures.

Drawing on our analysis of the Murray-Darling basin, we characterized two contrasting archetypes of climate adaptive water policy: one focuses on administratively rational policies and narrow responses to climate stressors; the other sees adaptation capacity as dynamic and emergent. We propose two sets of provisional indicators of these different approaches to climate adaptation. These fundamentally different policy approaches are co-constituted by different problem definitions. They build on different governance logic, dominant policy framings, and unstated norms about power and agency. We argue that these factors influence how adaptation policy is developed and deployed and shape the socio-political dynamics determining how water is used and shared across human and nonhuman communities. The framework we present is provisional. We encourage further research in comparative policy analysis to shed light on the regimes supporting the transition to just and effective climate-adaptive water policies.

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