The book covers the status of Australia.s water resources and their future prospects, the many values we hold for water, and the potential for using water more effectively to meet the growing demands of cities, farmers, industries, and the environment.

Australia’s Water Resources seeks to explore the circumstances underpinning the profound reorientation of attitudes and relationships to water that has taken place in Australia in recent decades. The changing emphasis from development to management of water resources continues to evolve and is reflected in a series of public policy initiatives directed towards rational, efficient and sustainable use of the nation's water. Australia is now recognised as a pacesetter in water reform. Administrative restructuring, water pricing, water markets and trade, integrated water resources management, and the emergence of the private sector, are features of a more economically sound and environmentally compatible water industry. It is important that these changes are documented and their rationale and effectiveness explained. This timely work provides an important synthesis of these issues. This revised paperback edition is a fully corrected reprint of the hardback edition.

Few policy areas in recent history have the attention of the Australian public and polity as much as those relating to water. Water Policy in Australia considers the current policy reform agenda from agricultural, environmental, and cultural perspectives. It presents a comprehensive account of the country's critical water issues and provides expert perspectives from behavioral and institutional economists, engineers, hydrologists, sociologists, and water law specialists. The environment can no longer support Australia's legacy of institutions, norms, and values relating to the exploitation of.

The book addresses major challenges in implementing required reforms in Australian water policy and management, with particular focus on social sciences research and knowledge that can inform policy. The NWI (National Water Initiative) was launched in 2004, with a schedule of implementation through to 2014, and is now agreed to by the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments. It is the overarching policy framework guiding Australian water management. The NWI continues and significantly extends key policy reforms in Australia over the past two decades, and brings these together into one powerful agenda which incorporates, among other things, integrated catchment management, tradable water rights, full accounting of resources and use, regional plans, and environmental allocations. The NWI sets out an ambitious and difficult reform agenda, the magnitude of which is only now beginning to be realised. Assumptions regarding implementation are being unsettled by realisations of critical knowledge deficits. This book will offer a substantial, rigorous and highly topical contribution to the capacity to implement the reform agenda in the near and medium term. (Note: S Dovers was involved in both these processes and products.)