National Urban Water Governance Program

The National Urban Water Governance Program is comprised of a group of social research projects that are investigating the changing governance of traditional urban water management in Australia. For example, new thinking such as the Australian innovation of Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) and Integrated Urban Water Management are gaining prominence and this is leading to change and reform agendas (i.e. the Australian Government’s National Water Initiative). However, at the same time there is a growing and diverse group of local and international commentators that suggest this shift has, at best, been slow and that many of the impediments to change are institutional and social, rather than technical. Therefore, the program is intended to help facilitate progress towards achieving a ‘water sensitive’ city by investigating a number of recognised knowledge gaps in relation to:

• understanding the current institutional, organisational and professional impediments and their relationships to advancing more sustainable urban water management, and
• understanding how to effectively enable institutional development and organisational change that encourages the wide-spread implementation of sustainable forms of urban water management.

The research will draw from a number of social science theories to better understand and explain: the transition from ‘traditional’ to ‘new’ forms of governance; the barriers creating institutional inertia to further change, and how to improve institutional capacity and organisational change.