Caring for Water Vulnerability and Integrated Water Resources Management in the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia

Abstract

The issue of water is one of the most debated issues in Australia’s environmental history, where there have been various constructions of approaches to understanding water as a resource and guiding water governance. Water is even constructed as a risk for the fact that it is not only an objective matter, but also connects the social and cultural contexts from which the risks related to it emerge. The paper is committed to exploring the social construction of water as an environmental risk in the most representative site in Australia – the Murray-Darling Basin.

Drawing upon the realist and constructionist approaches to the sociology of the environment and informed by theories on the concept of risk, the paper attempts to employ the theoretical framework developed by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck that serves the objective to examine the conceptualization of water as an environmental risk in Australia as well as the social construction of water-related risks in the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia. As for the approach to the analysis of the water-related risks, in accordance with Beck’s risk society theory, risk approach is adopted, under three thematic groupings including “knowledge”, “future-orientation” and “man-made hybrid”, with construction as the main methodology.

Through an in-depth study of “risk of what” and “how risks are socially constructed” in the Murray-Darling Basin, the paper reveals the important roles of “knowledge”, “future” and “man-made hybrid of nature and society” in the social construction of risks in relation to water resources in the Basin. The paper also implies that in addition to social construction, it is of significance to note the “reality” aspect of risk and its implications for future water governance.