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As the limitations to Australia's water resources are becoming better understood the issues relating to water allocation are becoming more complex and contested. There is a need to interpret them in the context of the social functions of water. There are two important questions that need to be resolved in this regard. What exactly are we allocating and by what framework can we judge the justice of this allocation. In examining the first issue we suggest that water resource negotiations need to move from a quantity (or gigalitre) approach to one of understanding the benefits that alternative water allocation policies can bring. We define Water Benefits as the ways in which water promotes or diminishes wellbeing in all domains both utilitarian and non utilitarian. We acknowledge that the same quantity of water can deliver multiple benefits as it moves through a catchment which makes it a difficult commodity for economic analysis. In answering the second question we examine Australian studies of lay ethics and common priorities for alternative uses to establish a methodological approach for evaluating the fairness of alternative allocation policies. This can be applied at both local and regional levels. The article concludes by demonstrating that there is ample opportunity for combining the benefits assessment with the systematic application of social justice analysis within the public discussion needed for procedurally just water reform. In this way the negotiations and conflict management accompanying water reform can be more accountable and systematically implemented than is currently the case.
Introduction
While social perspectives on water resource management have been researched for some time, there have been recent expressions of concern that such insights have not been systematically incorporated or institutionalised within natural resource decision making (Dale, Taylor and Lane 2001; Selin and Pierskalla 2005). Even though the water management literature actively embraces the rhetoric of sustainable management of water resources which supposedly, at minimum, includes the triple bottom lines of social, economic and environmental analysis, there is relatively little emphasis on the social dimension. The major discourse appears to be between the economic imperative and the need for environmental conservation.
This has clearly been the case in Australia where there has been a substantial effort in water reform. In 1992 the Council of Australian Governments...