Abstract
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Water planning and management are faced with increasing levels of uncertainty, complexity and
conflict. Multiple decision makers and managers, legislative requirements, competing interests,
scarcity of resources, deskilling of management agencies and large uncertainties about the future in a
more connected and rapidly changing world, are all drivers for the need to develop improved
approaches to aid decision making in the water sector. This paper proposes a “participatory valuesbased
risk management approach”, designed to help to make uncertainties explicit, structure
complexity in more understandable forms, increase collaboration and manage conflict. The approach
will be explained through a case study example: the creation of the Lower Hawkesbury Estuary
Management Plan in NSW, Australia. This process, driven by local government, included three
interactive stakeholder workshops based on stages of a generalised “participatory modelling process
to aid decision making” and the Australian and New Zealand Standard for Risk Management (AS/NZS
4360:2004), as well as an external scientific and legislative review. A range of stakeholders from state
and local governments, the water authority, local industries, community associations and residents
took part in the process stages of: “initial context establishment” including the definition of estuarine
values, issues and current management practices; “risk assessment” based on the stakeholder
defined values (assets) and issues (risks); and “strategy formulation” to treat the highly prioritised risks
as input to the estuary management action (or “risk response” plan). As the plan has not been finalised
or implemented, the external process effectiveness can not yet be properly gauged. However,
preliminary evaluation results appear to demonstrate that the process is efficient from time and
budgetary perspectives and has a number of other potential benefits which will be outlined in this
paper. Other lessons learnt and possible suggestions for best-practice when using such an approach
in future water sector applications will also be highlighted.