Key CEG research staff Drs Leonie Pearson, Jo Mummery and Prof. Jacki Schirmer were featured in this year's Research Festival at UC on Monday 5 June. Their presentation on “Adaptation and Resilience in the Murray-Darling Basin" demonstrated how this research is helping to inform water policy evaluation using an ‘Outlook’. The team emphasised the critical role researchers have in multi-disciplinary collaborations, synthesising relevant information with primary research, acting as both honest brokers and pure scientists.
Dr Leonie Pearson speaks about the design of the Murray Darling Basin Water Policy
The presentation noted that the Murray Darling Basin will have a new Water Policy in 2026, but before the policy can be designed, knowledge and insights need to be gathered to understand the current and future condition of the Basin. The Murray Darling Basin Authority is implementing an ‘Outlook’ approach to gathering these insights, and UC has some lead roles in its delivery, particularly looking at; Resilience, Adaptation and Drivers of Change (RAD), and Social Wellbeing and values.
A key aim of using research to inform policy is understanding how, and in what frame, knowledges are created, collated, synthesized, and then shared. We shared our approach for both RAD and Social Well being section of the Basin Outlook, along with the challenges of such synthesising work, and how its early insights are shaping up.