Make yourself a stakeholder in the stakeholder engagement strategy for the Murray Darling Basin Plan development process

 

The Guide to the Proposed Murray-Darling Basin Plan

is being released this afternoon.

Are you a Stakeholder?

You may not consider yourself a stakeholder,

but you can be if you want to be.

Please go to this page to read all about the

Stakeholder Engagement Plan

of the

Murray-Darling Basin Authority.

The stakeholder list is extensive

Here is a list (but not the whole list) of the people the MDBA considers part of their stakeholder engagement process:

Our stakeholders are groups or individuals who have an interest in the development and implementation of the Basin Plan and the activities of MDBA.

In preparing the stakeholder engagement strategy, we identified over 1000 stakeholder groups who can be broadly grouped as follows:

• · people living in the Basin and the broader Australian community
• · industry, conservation, recreation and community groups
• · local governments
• · Indigenous peoples
• · Basin Community Committee
• · Basin Officials Committee
• · state government agencies and departments — scientific, technical and policy
• · Commonwealth Government agencies and departments — scientific, technical and policy
• science and research communities

So, you can see Networkers, it is all up to you.  You can include yourself through sheer interest – and interest can be wide or specific.

I suggest that you consider your interest.  Please ensure you read the previous post – and get yourself to one of the MDBA roadshow events somewhere in the four-state-and-one-territory-wide Basin.  There is an event coming to somewhere near you.

This is the biggest structural adjustment in Australia since white settlers first arrived and we began to fight the First Nations for control of their land.  We are about to see farmers and people living in rural and regional Australia put up a fight for control of their livelihoods, their communities, and what they consider as their land and their water.

This structural adjustment will be so widespread in breadth and depth that few of us will be left unaffected … right down to food availability, food security, food pricing and food quality.  So you may not be a grower.  You may not live in a rural or regional town or city.  But sure as God made little green apples you are a consumer!

So there is the involvement of your very own individual self-interest.  But let us all, Networkers, reach beyond that to listen to the people in the Murray-Darling Basin who are most affected by any future decisions.  We may not always agree with them.  We might find their priorities are not our priorities.  However, we owe these people our greatest attention and respect in what they about to go through.  For so many of them will find themselves in the Valley of Decision.  That is not a pretty place to be…and some will suffer from the strain.

Further reading:

Regional communities  can build resilient futures with less water
(download document in box above)
Murray Darling  cuts 'could spark riots
Irrigators warn water cuts will devastate communities

Related articles

• Water cuts would decimate towns: Joyce (news.theage.com.au)