Freshwater ecosystems

4.8 Quality assurance: auditing and enforcing implementation

The principle of quality assurance can be simply stated: “quality is not an accident”. To achieve desired outcomes from a complex system, careful planning is necessary. It is now widely agreed that this planning takes several fundamental steps which form a continual process, sometimes referred to as ‘adaptive management’. This process has now been embedded in all fields of environmental management through use in the environmental management system (EMS) framework:
Figure 1. The Environmental Management System Quality Assurance Cycle⁶².

No system of resource management will be effective unless it is implemented, enforced as necessary, audited and reviewed⁶³. These are standard quality assurance techniques, built into internationally accepted standards such as the ISO 9000 (quality assurance) and ISO 14,000 series (EMS).

This paper suggests there are four key elements which must exist for any administrative system to be effective in managing cumulative effects. The first is that legislation should provide mechanisms capable of setting caps on water-affecting developments within each catchment. It cannot be stressed too strongly that such mechanisms must be auditable and enforceable. Unless the extent of developments (water diversion for human use, for example) are monitored, enforcement or performance evaluation will be impossible. This point about monitoring is so important that it could, perhaps, be elevated to the status of a fifth ‘key element’.
It is essential that programs be designed, and budgets provided, to audit compliance and enforce controls. A situation where a farmer sees his neighbour build a substantial dam without the required approvals, and the State takes no effective action, undermines the entire water management regime. Under such conditions, cumulative effects become impossible to control.

4.9 An example: capping water extraction

The management of water extraction provides an example. In theory, managing the cumulative effects of water allocations sounds straight-forward. A catchment can only supply a limited amount of water in any one year (on average); clearly water extraction cannot be allowed to increase indefinitely without applying limits.
Firstly the catchment must be identified, and calculations made regarding: (a) the size of the stocks and flows of surface and ground waters, (b) how they are linked, and (c) how they vary over seasons, years and decades.
Secondly ecosystems dependent on these water stocks must be identified in rivers, riparian areas, floodplains, wetlands, lakes and aquifers - and calculations made to determine the environmental flows (quantity, quality⁶⁴, and timing) necessary to sustain these ecosystems at whatever quality level you designate (quality defined in terms of ecosystem values and services). The only environmental flow which will protect 100% of ecosystem value is the river’s complete natural flow, for it is this to which the ecosystem, in its natural state, has adapted. All environmental flows in practice imply some degradation in ecosystem value and services. In calculating these environmental flows (which will vary within timeframes of seasons, years and decades) the precautionary principle should be applied - with the most conservative estimates (and thus the lowest risk of significant degradation) applying to the most highly-valued ecosystems (which have, of course, been identified).
Thirdly, flows necessary to sustain other recreational, geomorphic, hydraulic, cultural or landscape values need to be factored in. Fourthly, what is left can be allocated for present and future human use. This is the catchment cap - which clearly must be set in terms of water availability, and measured in levels which will vary over time. In times of drought, accepted national principles (ARMCANZ 1996) require that two classes of water use must have priority: environmental flows, and stock and domestic use.
One technique commonly applied is to permit water extraction from, say, the 80^th percentile flow. This implies that water users will face restrictions in two years out of ten (on average). However, to implement such a regime effectively, there are a number of steps which, in my experience, are generally not applied. First, where the flow distribution⁶⁵ is unknown or poorly known, it should be estimated with a large precautionary margin. Second, extraction licences should require that flows be measured daily, before extraction commences, and where flow falls below the pre-determined level, no extraction will take place. Third, where a user is heavily dependent on daily extraction (as in aquaculture) the licence should require operational provisions (for water recycling, for example) be put in place before they are needed, and forth, these licence conditions must be audited and enforced, particularly in drought years.
Explicit caps on development must be established to prevent these sustainable levels being exceeded. These caps must be established well ahead of demand; if this is not done, their establishment becomes socially, politically and economically impossible within the framework of a democracy where tomorrow's water users (the ones who will pay for our mistakes) do not vote.
Although this process sounds straightforward, it can be argued that it has never been fully applied in the Australian context. The degraded (and still degrading) state of Australia's largest and most important⁶⁶ river basin, the Murray-Darling, bears testament to the difficulty of managing cumulative effects. No-one ever intended the damage which has occurred. It happened incrementally, little by little, because the processes we put in place could not (and still cannot) manage to control the cumulative effects of incremental development.