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An ecosystem services framework to supportstatutory water allocation planning in AustraliaRoel Plantab & Timothy Priorc

a Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney,Australiab UMR TETIS AgroParisTech, CIRAD, Irstea, Maison de la Télédétection, 500 Rue Jean-François Breton, 34093 Montpellier, Cedex 05, Francec Leader, Risk & Resilience Research Group, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zürich,Haldeneggsteig 4, IFW (B 48.2), 8092 Zürich, Switzerland. Email:Accepted author version posted online: 15 Nov 2013.Published online: 05 Feb 2014.

To cite this article: Roel Plant & Timothy Prior (2014): An ecosystem services framework to support statutory waterallocation planning in Australia, International Journal of River Basin Management, DOI: 10.1080/15715124.2013.865635

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15715124.2013.865635

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Research paper

An ecosystem services framework to support statutory water allocation planning inAustralia

ROEL PLANT, Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney,Australia; UMR TETIS AgroParisTech, CIRAD, Irstea, Maison de la Teledetection, 500 Rue Jean-Francois Breton,34093 Montpellier, Cedex 05, France. Email: roel.plant@uts.edu.au (author for correspondence)

TIMOTHY PRIOR, Leader, Risk & Resilience Research Group, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich,Haldeneggsteig 4, IFW (B 48.2), 8092 Zurich, Switzerland. Email: tim.prior@sipo.gess.ethz.ch

ABSTRACTDuring the past decade the concept of ecosystem services (ES) – the benefits that nature provides to humans – has increasingly been embraced as apromising avenue towards sustainable resource management. Initially pitched to incentive-based biodiversity conservation, the ES concept is nowbeing applied to a diversity of environmental resources in a multitude of policy, planning and management contexts. In the context of water planning,the ES concept is increasingly rivalling the Integrated Water Resource Management paradigm. Despite the omnipresence of the ES language, significantchallenges remain in terms of ES implementation and governance. This paper reports on lessons learnt from the collaborative development of an ESFramework within the context of statutory water allocation planning in Australia. The Framework consists of seven components, three of which matchkey planning steps in existing Australian statutory water planning guidelines. Central to the Framework is a benefits table for water planning. Thebenefits table is based on the ‘ES cascade’ model, a metaphor which makes clear distinctions between ecosystem processes, functions, services, benefits,values and beneficiaries. The benefits table is intended for bidirectional use, confronting demands of water system beneficiaries with the biophysicalmechanisms that render the services. The Framework is innovative in three ways. First, it was jointly designed with Australia’s national water agency(the National Water Commission), based on statutory guidelines for water planning and management. Second, it addresses a statutory requirement forwater planning processes to better consider public benefits from aquatic systems, thus providing a direct incentive for water planners to engage with theFramework. Third, the Framework emphasizes the need for comprehensive, a-priori analysis of ES beneficiaries. Comprehensive evaluation of the ESFramework will be required to document successful applications and share lessons learnt amongst the water planning and ES research communities.

Keywords: Ecosystem services; statutory water planning; stakeholder engagement; public benefits of water; beneficiaries; aquatic

ecosystems

1 Introduction

Over the past 15 years by far the most prominent development in

conceptually linking people and nature has been the concept of

ecosystem services (ES) (Gomez-Baggethun et al. 2010). After

several, now much-cited publications emerged in the late

1990s (Baskin 1997, Costanza et al. 1997, Daily 1997), the ES

concept received increasing attention from selected scientific

communities, mostly in the realms of ecology and economics.

In 2003 the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA)

adopted an ‘ES approach’ for its assessment of global trends in

the state of ecosystems (MEA 2005). From 2005 onwards, the

popularity of the term ‘ES’ began to take on features of a true

paradigm shift, especially through the strand of research

representing the economic extension of the MEA (Sukhdev

et al. 2010).

Initially pitched to promote incentive-based biodiversity con-

servation, the ES concept is now being applied to a much broader

range of environmental resources, or ‘natural assets’ in a multi-

tude of policy and decision-making contexts, for example,

land-use planning (e.g. de Groot 2006, Maria Paula and Nestor

Oscar 2012), soil management (e.g. Dominati et al. 2010,

Faber and van Wensem 2012) and water management (e.g.

Zander and Straton 2010, Bastian et al. 2012).

ES from freshwater hydrologic resources have received ample

attention since the early days (Ruhl 1999, Postel 2002, Postel

2003). Indeed, one of the best-known applications of the ES

concept pertained to a hydrologic service – that of water

Received 31 January 2013. Accepted 5 November 2013.

ISSN 1571-5124 print/ISSN 1814-2060 onlinehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15715124.2013.865635http://www.tandfonline.com

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supply – provided by the Catskill watershed near New York

City, USA (Heal 2000). ES-based approaches for watershed pro-

tection continue to receive ample attention in the literature (e.g.

Kaplowitz et al. 2012). Other ES studies in the context of water-

shed management include Postel and Thompson (2005) and Pert

et al. (2010). Brauman et al. (2007) provide an overview of eco-

system functions responsible for producing terrestrial hydrologic

services. According to Brauman et al. (2007), hydrologic ser-

vices encompass ‘the benefits to people that are produced by ter-

restrial-ecosystem effects on freshwater’ in five broad categories:

(i) extractive water supply; (ii) in-stream water supply; (iii) water

damage mitigation; (iv) provision of water-related cultural ser-

vices and (v) maintenance of aquatic habitats that produce ser-

vices. Four key attributes of service are emphasized: quantity,

quality, location and timing of flow. Water-related ES have

also been studied in the context of nutrient retention and pesti-

cide risk reduction by Lautenbach et al. (2012). This study

mapped habitat (provisioning and nursery) and nitrogen reten-

tion as ecosystem service indicators to facilitate implementation

of the ES concept in the context of planning and decision

support.

In basin-scale water resource management and research the

Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) concept has

dominated since the early 2000s. However in recent years, in

part boosted by the public participation requirements of the EU

Water Framework Directive (Van der Heijden and Ten Heuvel-

hof 2012), the ES concept has also gathered prominence as

both a rivalling approach to IWRM and a complementary

concept filling gaps in IWRM (Cook and Spray 2012). Gilman

et al. (2004) were amongst the early scholars who have argued

that maintenance of ES depends on the conservation of native

biodiversity, which IWRM, according to these authors, at the

time of their study did not adequately incorporate. Picking up

on this challenge, several more recent studies have attempted

to use the ES concept to address environmental flows (Korsgaard

et al. 2008) and the social values these can provide (Meijer and

Hajiamiri 2007).

Today, IWRM and ES are evolving into nearly identical con-

cepts, both of which may be facing the same critical challenges of

implementation (Cook and Spray 2012). The ‘implementation

gap’ highlighted by these authors pertains to conceptual and

methodological incompatibility with the real-world constraints

of water management and governance (Ruhl et al. 2007).

Indeed, some evidence has emerged suggesting that Australian

catchment managers do not necessarily find the ES concept rel-

evant or practicable, often because they lack both the tools and

incentives for using the concept in their daily planning and man-

agement activities (Plant and Ryan 2013). The need for the ES

concept to deliver has also been articulated by some of its

initial proponents (Daily and Matson 2008, Daily et al. 2009).

Daily et al. (2011) offer a framework for moving ES theory to

practical implementation, connecting the science of identifying,

quantifying and valuing services with the policies to devise

service-based incentive schemes and management actions. The

continuous framework starts with natural resource decisions

encouraging actions pertaining to land, water and biodiversity

use. It then addresses the biophysical characteristics of ecosys-tems and the services they provide. The two subsequent elements

of the framework are socio-economic: values and institutions,

expressing the perspective that valuing ES provides useful infor-

mation that can help shape institutions which in turn govern

decisions. Whilst a critique of environmental valuation is

beyond the scope of the current paper, one might ask whether

valuation is the ES framework’s weak link, which to date has

hampered successful implementation. Liu et al. (2010): 73, in

their review of ES valuation, concluded that

the contribution of [ES valuation] to ecosystem management hasnot been as large as hoped nor as clear as imagined. This requiresresearchers to do more than simply develop good ideas to influ-ence policy. They need to understand how the political processaffects outcomes and actively market the use of appropriate andfeasible methodologies for promoting environmental policy.

Norgaard (2010) has argued that the success of the ES ‘meta-

phor’ is putting integral sustainable solutions at risk because it

invites project-based solutions without addressing major, funda-

mental institutional change. Norgaard (2010) sees the ES

approach as part of a larger solution to environmental problems,

but believes that its dominance in characterizing situations and

solutions is ‘blinding’ us to the ecological, economic and politi-

cal complexities of the challenges we actually face.

Acknowledging the ES paradigm’s strengths, weaknesses and

challenges outlined above, this paper presents an ES framework

(hereafter referred to as Framework) that was developed within

the context of statutory water allocation planning in Australia

(Plant et al. 2012). Our paper aims to report on the process fol-

lowed to develop the Framework and critically reflect on its

strengths and weaknesses with a view for our experiences to

guide and inform similar initiatives elsewhere. The Framework

was developed collaboratively with the National Water Commis-

sion (NWC), Australia’s major federal agency responsible for

driving national water reform, and its key stakeholders including

jurisdictional water planners and treasury. The development of

the Framework responded to a statutory call for ‘planning pro-

cesses in which there is adequate opportunity for productive,

environmental and other public benefit considerations to be

identified and considered in an open and transparent way’

(COAG 2004).The paper is structured as follows. The next section describes

the process followed to develop the Framework, briefly addres-

sing the Australian water policy context, and positioning of the

Framework within existing ES typologies and classifications.

Section 3 describes each of the seven components that comprise

the ES Framework for water planning. Section 4 discusses the

strengths and weaknesses of the Framework as well as the pro-

spects for the Framework to be adopted by water planners in

Australia and elsewhere. The paper concludes with a brief

summary of the lessons learnt and further research needs

identified.

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2 Framework positioning and development

2.1 Policy context

Traditionally, water availability and management have been key

topical policy issues for Australia. Limited and uncertain water

resources, due to the high variability of Australia’s (changing)

climate and the geographic location of water resources,

coupled with often conflicting economic, social and environ-

mental interests make effective water planning an absolute

necessity (Hussey and Dovers 2007, Hamstead et al. 2008).

Since the establishment of the Council of Australian Govern-

ments (COAG) water reform framework in 1994, Australia’s

approach to reforming water policy and management has

changed significantly. States and territories have made signifi-

cant progress towards more efficient and more sustainable

water management, with many jurisdictions embarking on

major reform programmes of their water management regimes.

Key foci of reform have been the separation of water access enti-

tlements from land titles, separating the functions of water deliv-

ery from those of regulation, and making explicit provisions for

environmental water (environmental flows) (Stoeckl and Abra-

hams 2007). In 2004, extending the 1994 COAG commitments,

the ongoing need for reform resulted in the establishment of the

National Water Initiative (NWI). This intergovernmental agree-

ment aims to achieve a nationally compatible market, regulatory

and planning system for water. It encompasses surface and

groundwater resources for both rural and urban use. A key

stated objective of the NWI is the optimization of economic,

social and environmental outcomes (COAG 2004).

Water allocation planning in Australia has a well-established

tradition of incorporating benefits arising from extractive or con-

sumptive uses of water from aquatic systems (e.g. irrigation and

bulk town water supply). In contrast, modifying and reducing

extraction to halt environmental degradation has proven to be

one of the most difficult aspects of Australia’s water reforms

(Hamstead 2009). Such notions as ‘over-allocation’ and

‘environmental water’, even though the NWI provides defi-

nitions, continue to stir significant debate and controversy. The

NWI specifies a requirement to return ‘over-allocated’ and over-

used systems to ‘environmentally sustainable levels of extrac-

tion’. Yet, each Australian jurisdiction approaches the

determination of environmentally sustainable levels of extraction

differently. In many parts of Australia this diversity of interpret-

ation manifests itself in debates about how much additional water

can be taken sustainably from rivers. One example is the outrage

of some irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin following the

release of a guide to the Murray Darling Basin Plan in 2010

which proposed substantial environmental water recovery

(CSIRO 2012).

One avenue towards resolving this controversy is to empha-

size the enhanced public benefits that aquatic systems may

provide under constrained extraction regimes and juxtapose the

value of these public benefits against social and economic

benefits from extractive uses of water. This approach is also

stipulated under the NWI where it calls for ‘planning processes

in which there is adequate opportunity for productive, environ-

mental and other public benefit considerations to be identified

and considered in an open and transparent way’ (NWI Clause

25iii). The NWI Policy Guidelines for Water Planning andManagement (COAG 2012), which set the statutory basis for

water planning and management at the state and territorial

level, also state a need for ‘explicit identification and consider-

ation of public benefits’. Further supporting the need for

approaches to capture a broader suite of benefits in water plan-

ning, a review of all water plans across Australia (NWC 2011)

identified inclusion in water planning of the non-consumptive

social values of water as a key challenge requiring action.

The need to express (public) benefits and social values associ-

ated with aquatic systems is clearly amenable to the logic of the

ES approach. Indeed, some NWI-related policy documents

already refer to ES, for example, the Water Act 2007 (Common-

wealth): ‘ . . . environmental assets include: (a) water-dependent

ecosystems, (b) ES, and (c) sites with ecological significance’

(Section 4 – Definitions). In this sense, the NWI represents

another case of adoption of the ES paradigm in Australian

environmental policy (Pittock et al. 2012).

It is within the statutory context summarized above that the

NWC, Australia’s principal federal agency responsible for imple-

menting the NWI, commissioned a project to develop an ES Fra-

mework for water allocation planning. The brief for the project

was based on extensive consultation with the water planning jur-

isdictions and scientific experts. The next section describes the

rationale for adopting and modifying an ES framework.

2.2 Framework structure

A critical requirement for the Framework was that it had to

acknowledge and complement existing water planning practices

and not impose an alternative planning approach. To meet this

requirement the Framework was designed to align with the

generic water planning process steps as specified in the NWI’s

Policy Guidelines for Water Planning and Management(COAG 2012) (Figure 1). The key steps defined in these guide-

lines include (i) describing the water resource and its use (includ-

ing the identification of future risks); (ii) setting high-level

objectives and outcomes; (iii) setting quantitative objectives in

terms of measurable targets and thresholds (including trade-off

analysis and risk assessment); (iv) developing water manage-

ment strategies; (v) implementing management arrangements;

(vi) implementing monitoring, compliance and enforcement

arrangements and (vii) reporting and review. The guidelines

also require iterative stakeholder engagement for steps (i)

through (iv). Although an ES approach could potentially also

inform steps (iv) and (v) of the guidelines (for example, by

implementing incentive schemes), planning steps (i), (ii), and

(vi) were identified as being most amenable to an ES approach.

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Therefore the Framework has four core planning elements

(describing the resource; setting high-level objectives; informing

trade-offs and monitoring and evaluation) and three supporting

components (general introduction specifying context and

purpose of the Framework; ES typology and categories; and

future directions). Further details for each of the components

are provided below.

A fundamental first step in any implementation of the ES

concept is the choice of an ES typology or classification. De

Groot et al. (2002) were amongst the first to propose a

detailed, generic classification. This classification also found

its way into the MEA’s well-known classification of ES in

four broad categories: provisioning, regulating, cultural and

supporting services (MEA 2005). Several alternative classifi-

cations and refinements have been proposed (Boyd and

Banzhaf 2007, Wallace 2007, Fisher and Turner 2008), some

of which have led to controversy and scholarly debate (Cost-

anza 2008). For the purpose of our Framework, set in the

context of water planning and aquatic systems, adoption of a

set of critical hydrologic ecosystem functions or services

(e.g. per Brauman et al. 2007) would have seemed a straight-

forward choice. However, selecting a subset of services would

have rendered the Framework inadequate in terms of its ability

to consider the full range of ES, public benefits and benefici-

aries during initial planning stages as a way to guide prioritiza-

tion of water allocation (Bryan et al. 2010, Pittock et al. 2012).

To ensure that the Framework has full flexibility and is capable

of capturing a broad range of ES, a ‘benefits table’ was devel-

oped, offering a menu of services to water planners, rather than

develop a fixed typology. Further details about this benefits

table are provided below.

Furthermore, recent work by Haines-Young and Potschin

(2010), building on the earlier typology proposed by de Groot

et al. (2002), has emphasized that ES typologies should avoid

confusing means with ends: the benefits that people actually

enjoy (i.e. the ends) and the mechanisms that give rise to the ser-

vice(s) that support the benefit (i.e. the means). This can be illus-

trated with the example of flood control. The presence of

ecological structures such as woodland and wetlands in a catch-

ment may have the capacity of executing a function which slows

the passage of surface water. This function can potentially

modify the intensity of flooding. The function of slowing

down the water passage is something people find useful – and,

in many cases, need to sustain their livelihoods. The function

is not a fundamental property of the ecosystem itself. Whether

the function is considered as a service or not depends on

whether flood control is considered a benefit, which in turn

depends on whether beneficiaries exist. People will appreciate

this function differently in different places at different times;

hence an ES framework should be capable of accommodating

a range of geographical, hydrological, ecological and social

characteristics of water planning areas.

To meet the flexibility requirement and emphasize that func-

tions, services, benefits and values should not be confused (and

are neither simple or linear), the ES ‘cascade’ model proposed

by Haines-Young and Potschin (2010) was adopted in modified

form (Figure 1). Similar conceptual models have been adopted

in several other major ES assessment efforts (Sukhdev et al.

2010, Watson and Albon 2011). Our modification entails a dis-

tinction between structures/processes, functions and services

upon which pressures are exerted on the one hand, and benefits,

beneficiaries and values on the other which can inform actions

to alleviate these pressures on aquatic systems. This modifi-

cation emphasizes that water planning based on an ES approach

should neither be a purely positivist activity where the analyst

works from the biophysical remit of ecosystem processes, func-

tions and services towards the ‘end point’ of economic valua-

tion of these services (Spash 2008b, Primmer and Furman

2012); nor a purely constructivist activity where stakeholders

deliberate on the value of aquatic systems without giving due

consideration to the available science (Wilson and Howarth

2002, Spash 2008a). Instead, the water planning process, and

indeed any planning process based on ES thinking, would

benefit from an iterative juxtaposition of the positivist and con-

structivist approach.

2.3 Stakeholder consultation

The primary process for developing the Framework was a series

of structured consultations with the NWC, scientific experts and

jurisdictional stakeholders. First, a project steering group con-

sisting of jurisdictional water planners and treasury representa-

tives was established to provide input at critical decision points

during Framework development. A schedule of three steering

Figure 1 Conceptual linkages between the ES ‘cascade’ model (deGroot et al. 2002, Haines-Young and Potschin 2010), which describesthe relationship between biodiversity, ecosystem function and humanwell-being, and the generic steps in water planning as specified in theAustralian NWI’s Policy Guidelines for Water Planning and Manage-ment (COAG 2012).

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group meetings was set up to allow and accommodate intermedi-

ate feedback on the draft Framework from jurisdictional water

planners. The first steering group meeting focussed on the con-

ceptual design of the Framework, the second on module

content and the third on a first full draft of the Framework.

Prior to each steering group meeting the draft materials were

reviewed by three external experts (water planning, water econ-

omics, natural resource management and stakeholder

consultation.

Second, six semi-structured telephone interviews were con-

ducted with technical water planners from five jurisdictions

(New South Wales, two interviews; South Australia, one inter-

view; Victoria, one interview; Tasmania, one interview; and

Queensland, one interview). All interviews were conducted by

two interviewers during September and October 2010. Intervie-

wees were asked about: (1) their disciplinary background, role

and experiences; (2) the challenges they were currently facing

in water planning; (3) the tools and methods they were currently

using; (4) their views about the NWI planning guidelines; (5)

their familiarity with the ES concept; (6) their current use of

ES and benefits concepts in stakeholder engagement and (7)

their expectations from an ES Framework for Australian water

allocation planning. All interviews were digitally recorded and

subsequently played back by the interviewers for qualitative ana-

lyses of the interviewees’ responses. Excel Worksheets were

used to systematically capture key quotations under the six cat-

egories as mentioned above (background; challenges; tools and

methods; planning guidelines; ES concept; stakeholder engage-

ment and expectations).

Having described the policy drivers for the ES Framework,

our rationale for choosing a conceptual model and typology,

and our approach to co-development of the Framework with

stakeholders, we proceed with a description of the seven major

ES Framework components.

3 ES framework components

3.1 Rationale for considering benefits more comprehensivelyin water planning

The first component of the ES Framework consists of an intro-

ductory module. It explains that the purpose of the Framework

is to help water planners identify, describe, communicate and

value the broader public benefits of aquatic systems. This Frame-

work component addresses over-allocation of river systems by

showing conceptually that as the ES of water consumption

increases, the provision of many other ES typically declines

(Figure 2). Addressing the NWI framework and planning guide-

lines, it is emphasized that the ES Framework is intended to

complement existing water planning guidelines and practices

rather than replace them. The merits of the Framework are

explained in terms of a broader framing of aquatic systems in

the context of water plan development; via an ES approach the

links between aquatic systems and people’s well-being can be

made much more explicit than under business-as-usual planning

practices.

3.2 A benefits table for water planning: elements and ways ofpopulating

The second Framework component introduces the key tenet of

the Framework, i.e. a ‘benefits table’. This table, an implemen-

tation of the concept of the ES ‘cascade’ proposed by Haines-

Young and Potschin (2010) (Figure 1), lays out how

Figure 2 Conceptual model illustrating that as water consumption increases, the provision of many other ES typically declines.

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beneficiaries, benefits, services and processes interact to generate

a bidirectional continuum of service provision and delivery. The

benefits table can be populated in a participatory stakeholder

process to allow systematic and transparent identification,

description and communication of the benefits and beneficiaries

of aquatic systems, the services and ecosystem processes that

underpin these and, importantly, the links between them. Popu-

lating the benefits table generates a programme logic, setting

out what a water plan will do and how it will do it, to help

water planners explain to their stakeholders and regulators how

people get multiple benefits from aquatic systems.

An important feature of the benefits table is that it invites the

planner to start the planning process with identifying benefici-aries rather than hydrologic functions or services. Whilst stake-

holder identification, classification and engagement have

received ample attention in water resources management (e.g.

Hare and Pahl-Wostl 2002), many current ES approaches

appear to under-emphasize beneficiaries and focus primarily

on identification and quantification of benefits, services, and

the functions and processes that provide these services. One

exception is Brauman et al. (2007), who explicitly address ben-

eficiaries of hydrologic services. ‘Left-to-right’ reasoning

through a populated benefits table allows water planners to

identify beneficiaries, benefits, services and processes within

their specific context, taking into account local socio-economic,

geographic, hydrological and ecological conditions. ‘Right-to-

left’ reasoning through a populated benefits table – starting

with processes and identifying beneficiaries depending or

demanding these services – offers water planners a tool to

demonstrate how changes in water allocation can affect the

capacity of a system to provide services and benefits. The

benefits table is presented as a conceptual aid and communi-

cation tool. The Framework component emphasizes that the

table is likely to yield best results when populated by commu-

nity stakeholders.

3.3 Describing the water resource: populating tablecomponents

The third component of the Framework matches the first plan-

ning step of the NWI planning guidelines (‘describing the

water resource and its use’, Figure 1) (COAG 2012) and can

therefore be seen as a core planning element. It demonstrates

how the benefits table can be populated with detailed, context-

specific information under the various elements of the ES

cascade model. The Framework component explains that the

benefits table extends traditional descriptions of the water

resource by emphasizing beneficiaries and benefits and their con-

nection to aquatic system services and processes. Populating the

benefits table requires four steps, starting from the left-hand side

of the table (beneficiaries). The first step is to identify benefici-

aries and benefits, asking who benefits from the aquatic system

and what benefits are received. The Framework component

offers a detailed list of benefit examples, classifying beneficiaries

in terms of their community type, lifestyle activity and income/

employment type in order of dependency on the aquatic

system. The next step, moving towards the right in Figure 3, is

to describe how each of the benefits listed is dependent on the

aquatic system, asking specifically how the benefit is dependent

on the services provided by the aquatic system. The Framework

component offers a list of examples of services, classified by

beneficiary type. Third, moving further towards the right of the

benefits table, the water planner determines how each service

is dependent on the water regime and other biophysical pro-

cesses. The fourth step in this component of the Framework con-

sists of determining how changes in water regimes might affect

beneficiaries. This step is intended to ‘close the loop’ by inviting

planners to look back along the links between water regime and

service, service and benefit and benefit and beneficiary.

3.4 Setting water planning objectives and outcomes

The next Framework component is also a core planning element,

corresponding with the second planning step in the NWI plan-

ning guidelines (‘setting high-level objectives and outcomes’,

Figure 1). The component describes how a populated benefits

table can help identify water planning objectives and outcomes

based on a broader, more transparent, recognition of the benefits

of safeguarding aquatic systems. The Framework component

corresponds to the water planning objectives and outcomes as

traditionally set for consumptive users, the environment and

flows. However, setting these in the context of benefits and ben-

eficiaries can assist in addressing environmental, social and

economic considerations simultaneously and moreover recog-

nize causal linkages and interdependencies. The Framework

component provides detailed guidance for sorting and prioritiz-

ing for objective setting; setting high-level objectives based on

beneficiaries, benefits, services and processes; and setting

specific and measurable outcomes.

3.5 Informing trade-offs: understanding dependencies,allocation scenarios and economics

The fifth component is also a core planning element and corre-

sponds with step three of the NWI planning guidelines (‘set

quantitative objectives in the form of measurable targets and

thresholds by conducting trade-off analysis and assessing the

risks to achieve these objectives’, Figure 1). This important Fra-

mework component explains why water allocation trade-offs

may be reframed as ‘consumptive uses’ versus ‘environmental

and other ecosystem service uses’: framing social, economic

and environmental outcomes as mutually exclusive poses a

risk of missing the key ecosystem linkages between them. The

populated benefits table helps water planners to better integrate

the linkages between environmental, economic and social out-

comes into the often difficult trade-off process. The benefits

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table offers a systematic and transparent way of assessing and

communicating how different water regime allocations may

impact on various benefits and beneficiaries.

The Framework component also presents a brief summary of

monetary valuation techniques that can assist the water planning

process, emphasizing that monetary valuation can be costly and

time intensive to implement in a credible way and that valuation

methods and results can also be subject to contention. Upon com-

mencement of the Framework development a conscious decision

was made to avoid placing economic valuation of ES at the

centre of the Framework, even though some stakeholders (e.g.

treasury representatives) expressed an explicit need for monetary

values. The Framework component acknowledges that monetary

valuation can play an (important) role in water planning based on

an ES approach and as such the Framework as a whole does not

aim to rival ES valuation approaches (Sukhdev et al. 2010,

CSIRO 2012). Other participatory, and indeed statutory planning

processes based on an ES approach found that very few

Figure 3 Generic representation of a benefits table for water allocation planning.

Ecosystem services framework 7

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stakeholders actually demanded or required monetary estimates

of the value of services identified in the planning process.

(Maynard et al. 2010).

3.6 Monitoring and evaluation: performance indicators

The monitoring and evaluation component of the Framework

also corresponds to a NWI planning step (‘implement monitor-

ing, compliance and enforcement arrangements’, Figure 1). It

explains how framing water planning performance indicators

and monitoring programmes in terms of benefits and services

can provide meaningful monitoring and evaluation. The Frame-

work component provides guidance for generating monitoring

and evaluation which is comprehensive and directly relevant to

stakeholders, and better captures the broader benefits of

aquatic systems. Performance indicators and monitoring pro-

grammes can be chosen at any or all of the levels in the benefits

table (i.e. beneficiary benefit, service or water regime (process)).

The final, workable selection of indicators depends on the par-

ticular circumstances of each water plan but should be derived

directly from plan outcomes and objectives (i.e. the fourth Fra-

mework component). The monitoring and evaluation approach

proposed in the Framework component also allows for systema-

tic adaptive management.

3.7 Prospects of water planning based on an ES approach

The closing component of the Framework offers a practitioner-

focussed appraisal of the state of play in ES science and pro-

spects of further embedding ES thinking in water allocation plan-

ning. The Framework component acknowledged that ES science,

especially as regards governance structures and institutional

change (Ruhl et al. 2007, Norgaard 2010, Wiek and Larson

2012), is very much a field in development and that sharing

success stories and lessons learnt by practitioners is important.

The approaches, tools and methods suggested in the Framework

are positioned as providing water planners with a starting point

that should be further developed, tested and refined through

ongoing application in real-life water planning situations. Brief

reference is finally made to application of ES approaches to

natural resource planning and management in Australia

(Pittock et al. 2012) and internationally, whilst national account-

ing and performance systems based on ES and/or concepts of

natural capital are mentioned as particularly promising

developments.

4 Discussion

Our development of an ES Framework for Australian water allo-

cation represents a unique situation where an opportunity to

ground an ES approach in planning practice has met with a stat-

utory need to improve water planning. As such, our Framework

emerged at the nexus of ES policy, science and practice. Whilst

systematic application of the first iteration of our ES Framework

(Plant et al. 2012) is still a long way from being turned into a stat-

utory requirement, the Framework does offer a well-aligned

extension of current Australian jurisdictional water planning

and moreover offers a comprehensive collection of approaches,

tools, methods and examples that can encourage water planners

in Australia and internationally to take up the challenge of better

recognizing the broader benefits of aquatic systems in their water

plans. In their recent review of 50 water vulnerability assessment

tools, Plummer et al. (2012) found no applications for Australia’s

socio-political context based on their adopted selection criteria.

This finding may reflect the rich diversity of tools and

approaches that Australian water resource managers typically

apply (Hamstead et al. 2008). Although the Framework pre-

sented in the current paper is not specifically targeting water

resource vulnerability, it partly addresses the gap identified by

Plummer et al. (2012) by offering an overarching approach

that will better allow water planners to use existing tools and

approaches in a more consistent and integrated way.

Our approach is, at least within the Australian context, inno-

vative with regard to where the notion of ES enters the planning

process. As discussed in the introduction of our paper, the Water

Act 2007 (Commonwealth), which forms the basis for the latest

water reforms in the Murray-Darling Basin, includes explicit

reference to the importance of ES. However, there is much uncer-

tainty as to whether and how analysis of aquatic ecosystem

benefits has influenced water allocation planning and decisions

(Chong 2012). Beyond the Framework presented in this paper

there is currently limited specific guidance about how to reflect

ecosystems in Australian water planning (Hamstead 2009). In

practice, ES are often analysed as an outcome of, rather than

an explicit input to, decision-making. An example of such a pos-teriori policy analysis based on ES is the recent study conducted

by CSIRO (2012). This research aimed to identify and quantify

the ‘ecological services and ES benefits’ that are likely to arise

from different scenarios of recovery of environmental water in

the Australian Murray-Darling Basin, using the current ecologi-

cal condition as the baseline. This benefits analysis provided one

of several inputs for an overall cost–benefit analysis of the pro-

posed Murray Darling Basin Plan. However, the benefits analysis

was commissioned and conducted after the Murray Darling

Basin Authority published its proposed Basin Plan in response

to community confusion and outrage as regards the socio-econ-

omic impacts of the Plan. Chong (2012) has argued that the

greatest potential for the ES concept to inform decision-

making lies in its role as a tool to inform an earlier stage of plan-

ning for water resources: as a taxonomy and ‘language’ to articu-

late and describe the range of potential benefits and beneficiaries

of water resources and water-dependent ecosystems.

Another often encountered limitation that our ES Framework

circumvents is the assumption that merely managing (hydraulic)

ecosystem functions (e.g. Brauman et al. 2007) will sustain gen-

eration of ES (Pittock et al. 2012). Making this assumption may

lead to an incomplete consideration of a broader range of ES,

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such as provisioning services from floodplain pastures and fish-

eries, cultural services associated with tourism, etc. The Frame-

work presented in the current paper explicitly unpacks the

complex cascade from ecosystem structure and process, via eco-

system functions to benefits, values and beneficiaries. Although

making these distinctions may amount to significant difficulties

and confusion in practice, the key advantages of maintaining

this distinction are that (i) double counting is avoided, (ii)

complex linkages are highlighted and (iii) stakeholders are

encouraged to develop a more detailed understanding of the ‘pro-

duction chain’ responsible for generating the benefits upon

which businesses and livelihoods may depend. Cook and

Spray (2012) have argued that the ES approach may be

coming to the fore in water management against the backdrop

of a growing body of literature which is critical of IWRM, and

that the ES paradigm should make wise use of the history of

IWRM by drawing on its criticisms. A major criticism of

IWRM has been that it has failed to understand the connection

between water and ecological health, and the links between the

health of natural ecosystems and human well-being (Gleick

2000). Based on our experiences, we suggest that this pitfall

can be avoided by further development and extension of the

ES cascade model (Haines-Young and Potschin 2010) as

implemented by means of our benefits table (Figure 3).

Whilst the institutional embedding and holistic design of our

ES Framework represent considerable strengths, our collabora-

tive effort to develop the Framework has also laid bare several

barriers for the Framework’s immediate broader uptake by

water planners and indeed some inherent weaknesses of the ES

paradigm itself. At the onset of our research the intent was to

develop and adopt an ES typology and classification and sub-

sequently demonstrate by example how it could be applied to jur-

isdictional water planning. However, when conducting our

telephone interviews with technical water planners it quickly

became clear that not a single Australian water planning

project could be identified which could explicitly be labelled

as having adopted an ‘ES approach’. This forced the Framework

to adopt a hypothetical water plan (The Queens River Water

Plan) and use that to hypothetically illustrate how the suggested

approaches, tools and methods could be applied in everyday

planning contexts. The Framework was further supplemented

with international examples, most of which placed strong

emphasis on monetary valuation of water-related ES. Moreover,

when we asked interviewees about their current methodologies

and appreciation of the ES approach we were met with severe

apprehension. Although all interviewees were familiar with the

ES concept, they were favouring other planning paradigms

such as risk-based management, a bioregion approach or monet-

ary valuation approaches such as benefits transfer. These

responses suggest that, whilst interviewees were generally sup-

portive of the initiative to develop an ES Framework for water

planning, they do not see merit in the ES concept as such. This

response is in agreement with perceptions of Australian catch-

ment managers as regards the use and usefulness of the

concept (Plant and Ryan 2013). As Framework development

progressed, a debate continued amongst the NWC and team of

researchers as to whether the term ‘ES’ should be used explicitly

in the Framework, or whether ES thinking should merely support

a benefits framework in the background. Recognizing the major

current advances in ES science (Braat and de Groot 2012) as well

as the ‘brand value’ of the term ES, the explicit use of the ES ter-

minology was maintained.

Furthermore, although the interviews with technical water

planners were undertaken with a view to identify tools,

methods and approaches currently in use and potentially amen-

able to an ES perspective (e.g. benefits transfer), they also

made clear that the day-to-day realities of Australian water plan-

ning can pose serious real-world constraint to broader uptake of

the ES Framework. A first barrier is clearly reflected in technical

water planners’ current apprehension towards the ES concept. If

they do not see the immediate advantages of shifting their prac-

tices, beyond what the statutory requirements stipulate, they will

never do so. This observation points to a need for documenting

and sharing success stories and examples. To date the only suc-

cessful major resource planning effort in Australia which expli-

citly adopted an ES approach is the South East Queensland

Ecosystem Services Framework (Maynard et al. 2010).

However, this example pertains primarily to catchment planning

and management and is less likely to speak to jurisdictional water

planners. Once water planners’ apprehension for the new has

been overcome, barriers are likely to remain with respect to the

scale at which the proposed Framework can realistically be

applied. For example, the Framework encourages comprehen-

sive a-priori identification of beneficiaries of ES. This deviates

from water planners’ current stakeholder consultation practices

in the sense that the beneficiaries approach proposed in the Fra-

mework promotes much broader and more integrated thinking

for which substantial resources are likely to be required. This

may prove challenging in the current resource- and knowl-

edge-constrained water planning environment (Hamstead et al.2008).

Furthermore, Norgaard (2010) has argued that today’s

ecology does not have the predictive capacity to identify and

quantify the sustainable use of ES. The MEA (2005) called for

ecologists to direct their research towards developing stronger

theory and empirical documentation of how nature delivers

flows for ES. There is arguably still a long way to go for the

scientific community, and inviting planners to grasp the full com-

plexity of the bidirectional nature of ES flows (science informs

beneficiaries; beneficiaries inform science) may help to further

this agenda.

Another likely challenge, inherent in the holistic nature of the

ES Framework, is the need for integration with land-use plan-

ning. In Australia, vegetation management beyond the riparian

zone falls beyond the remit of water planning and is primarily

covered under Australia’s Natural Resource Management

System (Hajkowicz 2009). This leaves water planners without

mechanisms to implement and enforce land and vegetation

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management strategies that protect and enhance water-related

ES. Complementary resource planning frameworks, such as resi-

lience thinking, may be required to provide an over-arching fra-

mework for integration (Benson and Garmenstani 2011) – which

again poses questions about the resources that are realistically

available to jurisdictional water planners.

Finally, there is the challenging issue of scale. When one con-

siders the ES cascade model and its use in a planning context as

proposed in the current paper, it can be argued that the unit of

analysis becomes progressively smaller as the planner works

through the benefits table from left (beneficiaries) to right (pro-

cesses). Comprehensive analysis of beneficiaries can arguably

be undertaken at large spatial scales (e.g. a river basin) without

an immediate need to make explicit where beneficiaries reside or

how they move across space. At the services level, detailed knowl-

edge about hydrology and ecology is synthesized into what can

be considered ‘functional units’ that are amenable to mapping

in space and time. At the rightmost end of the model, however,

characterization of hydro-ecologic process dynamics at large

scales becomes increasingly challenging because this would

require detailed process knowledge combined with information

about the parameters that drive these processes. Mapping such par-

ameters over large areas is likely to pose significant scientific chal-

lenges in a water planning context. To address the rightmost part of

the Framework (Figure 3), water planners may therefore have

to revert to examples or ‘vignettes’ that are indicative (but not

necessarily representative) of hydro-ecologic dynamics elsewhere

in the region, catchment or system under study.

5 Conclusion

Dealing with ‘public good’ benefits and the linkages between

‘triple bottom line’ outcomes is an area of particular challenge

in Australian water planning. An ES approach offers a way of

comprehensively defining benefits from aquatic ecosystems,

demonstrating how socio-economic systems and aquatic ecosys-

tems are linked through the web of services and benefits, and sys-

tematically working through the range of effects that changes to

water allocation strategies can have. An ES approach to water

resources management could be an improvement over the

IWRM paradigm, provided that the ES approach delivers on

its promise to help water planners better understand the links

between ecosystems and human well-being. Although in our par-

ticular instance Australian water planning guidelines were used

as a statutory basis, the ‘benefits’ approach to resource planning

could potentially be applied more broadly. Furthermore, the

lessons learnt from the development process (e.g. difficulty in

finding past examples, need for dummy water plans, etc.) also

have broader relevance.

The ES Framework presented in this paper is innovative in

three ways. First, it is designed based on existing (statutory)

guidelines for water planning and management. Second, it

addresses a statutory requirement for planning processes to

allow adequate opportunity for productive, environmental and

other public benefit considerations to be identified and con-

sidered in an open and transparent way, thus providing a direct

incentive for water planners to engage with the Framework.

Third, the Framework emphasizes the need for comprehensive,

a-priori analysis of actual, potential, direct and indirect benefici-

aries of ES. This invites comprehensive identification of stake-

holders based on their wants, needs and dependencies on

aquatic ecosystems.

Clearly more testing and development of the ES Framework

presented here is needed. It is important that successful appli-

cations are documented and shared amongst the water planning

and ES research communities. The need for practicability will

require a flexible and pragmatic approach to applying a range

of approaches, tools and methods, and acceptance of simplifying

assumptions to represent complex interactions between and

within natural environments and human societies, or aquatic eco-

systems and people. A priority area for future research will be, in

due course a systematic analysis of Australian and international

water plans which have incorporated ES thinking. This will help

us answer the open question of whether the ES concept can

indeed make a real difference in terms of ecological and societal

outcomes of resource management.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Clare Taylor and Mark Hamstead for their major con-tributions to the development of the ES Framework. We also thank ourproject steering group members for their comments and advice on earlierversions of the Framework. We are much indebted to Steve Cork andGeoff Syme for their thoughtful expert reviews of the Framework.The contributions of Louise Boronyak, Joanne Chong, Jade Herrimanand Thomas Boyle to the various Framework components are alsogreatly acknowledged. We are also grateful to Lucy Emerton, JosBrils and Suzanne Van Der Meulen for their help with cataloguing inter-national case studies and examples.

Funding

Funding for this research was provided by the Australian NWC under itsRaising National Water Standards Program.

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