Building a community of conversation about water governance in Australia

Water governance that addresses climate change impacts has emerged as a central research concern that spans many disciplines, countries and contexts. Within Australia, water governance has attained prominence due to examples of water governance 'wicked problems' that have gained national attention, such as the Murray-Darling Basin. Despite the burgeoning research preoccupation with climate change adaptation and water governance, to date there has been little collaborative effort devoted to building research linkages and communities of practice (CoP) around water governance. The emergence of successful CoPs from within broader communities of interest can be facilitated by creating both virtual and manifest 'space' for conversation. Accordingly, we set out to create a community of conversation about water governance in Australia, in the context of climate change adaptation, spanning the period 2009-2011. Our aim was to facilitate the formation of collaborative research links, new opportunities for collaborative research, and importantly, for early-career researchers to engage with a national network of researchers. We designed a series of structured activities to build a community of conversation to collectively reframe water governance research. These included workshops, the development of briefing papers, submissions to public inquiries and preparation of special journal issues. Participants in these activities jointly identified a need to acknowledge water governance as a complex, adaptive system in water policy and practice. The groups also recognised a need to build multi-disciplinary engagement around water governance (broadly conceived) as a means for interrogating current approaches and facilitating 'change'. Early career researchers were key participants in articulating how 'change' might occur and their insights were valuable as to the barriers that might be faced by researchers seeking to break with traditional research and practice methodologies. A further challenge arose around how to investigate different 'knowledges' (interdisciplinary and 'on-the-ground') and how various perspectives can be integrated with each other and in practice. The ability for those with diverse perspectives to work together in response to climate change is therefore critical, and to a certain degree can be fostered by creating communities of conversation.