Socio-hydrologic drivers of the pendulum swing between agricultural development and environmental health: a case study from Murrumbidgee River basin, Australia

This paper presents a case study centred on the Murrumbidgee River basin in eastern Australia. It illustrates the dynamics of the balance between water extraction and use for food production, and efforts to mitigate and reverse consequent degradation of the riparian environment. In par- ticular, the paper traces the history of a pendulum swing be- tween an exclusive focus on agricultural development and food production in the initial stages and its attendant socio- economic benefits, followed by the gradual realization of the adverse environmental impacts, subsequent efforts to miti- gate these with the use of remedial measures, and ultimately concerted efforts and externally imposed solutions to restore environmental health and ecosystem services. The 100-year history of development within the Murrumbidgee is divided into four eras, each underpinned by the dominance of dif- ferent values and norms and turning points characterized by their changes. The various stages of development can be characterized by the dominance, in turn, of infrastructure sys- tems, policy frameworks, economic instruments, and techno- logical solutions. The paper argues that, to avoid these costly pendulum swings, management needs to be underpinned by long-term coupled socio-hydrologic system models that ex- plicitly include the two-way coupling between human and hydrological systems, including the slow evolution of hu- man values and norms relating to water and the environ- ment. Such coupled human-water system models can pro- vide insights into dominant controls of the trajectory of their co-evolution in a given system, and can also be used to in- terpret patterns of co-evolution of such coupled systems in different places across gradients of climatic, socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions, and in this way to help develop generalizable understanding.