Planning for Success: Collaborative water management and planning in an Australian river catchment

Collaboration between stakeholders plays an important role in natural resource management (NRM). It is particularly key to managing water resources, which often cross jurisdictional boundaries and are typically managed by multiple stakeholders. The role of social capital in making NRM collaborations successful has also been recognised. In this paper, we explore the development of social capital in NRM governance networks through an analysis of the Actions for Clean Water (ACWA) project, a collaborative NRM planning process in the Upper Murrumbidgee Catchment, southeastern Australia. We argue that the success of collaborative processes like ACWA is related to the strength of linkages between stakeholders, and the stocks of social capital that these linkages contribute to. We further suggest that collaborative processes can stimulate linkages between participating organisations, paving the way for further collaboration and facilitating the integrated management of water resources. However, their ability to do so is strongly influenced by the geographical, historical, institutional, political and economic contexts in which they are embedded. These contextual factors must be taken into account if natural resource managers are to design collaborative processes that can strengthen governance networks and improve water resource management outcomes in a climate change future