Sustainable water management: the effects of calculative practices
Creators: name: Wijesinghe, Beddage Dinushi
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 350105
subject: Management accounting

description: I have undertaken an in-depth study of Australia’s Murray Darling Basin (MDB) by adopting an interpretive case study approach. This study aims to explore and understand the role of calculative practices and their effects in addressing social problems, such as water scarcity and ecosystem degradation, to achieve Sustainable Water Management. From a methodological point of view, this study adopts an interpretive case study approach to meet the purpose of the study.

The MDB is Australia’s largest and most complex river system. The Basin must balance its limited water resources between complex socioeconomic and environmental needs. The water allocation process at MDB involves managing the expectations of various actors interested in water allocation. The empirical material for the study was collected by conducting in-depth interviews and supplementing them with extensive study and analysis of relevant publicly available documents. Twenty interviews were conducted that included officers with responsibilities for water management, farmers, and water brokers. 

Documentary analysis was conducted of publicly available documents. These sources also supplement the interview data. The collected data were analysed using the interactive model of Miles et al. (2014) that involves three concurrent flows of activities: data reduction, data display and conclusion drawing. Concepts from Actor-Network Theory (ANT), namely, the process of translation (Latour, 1987), the concept of framing and overflowing (Callon, 1998) and the three-stage framing of calculative space (Callon &amp; Muniesa, 2005) were utilised as the theoretical lens to interpret my findings. 

The study focuses on calculative mechanisms that were framed to recover and sustain the MDB’s rivers and ecosystem health following a perceived over-extraction of water for socioeconomic needs. These mechanisms can be seen as efforts to focus on sustainability in the context of the Anthropocene. In attempting to find a safe operating space for socioeconomic activities, Chapter 6 explains how the sustainable level of extraction for consumptive water was introduced with a calculative space, the Sustainable Diversion Limit Mechanism “SDLM” to try to allocate water specifically for the environment. The chapter also reveals the multiple important roles played by calculative practices in enabling and constraining the fragile and heterogeneous actor-networks that exhibit competing objectives. 

Chapter 7 discusses how, following the introduction of E-water, the overflows from the SDLM were reframed using the Sustainable Diversion Limit Adjustment Mechanism (Adjustment Mechanism) based on the water savings predicted on infrastructure projects. The theoretically informed analysis highlights the effects of framing a calculative space for estimating water savings and the never-ending process of framing/reframing and subsequent overflows. This study illustrates the influence of more powerful actants, such as farmers, in influencing water allocation at the Basin and using calculative spaces as a shroud of legitimacy which complicates the already challenging efforts to balance socioeconomic and environmental water needs. Finally, the chapter highlights the limitations and inconsistencies in calculative mechanisms and related calculative agencies that have resulted in surprising overflows, which varied from expected outcomes puncturing the Basin Plan network. 

How the enrolled allies manage the SDLM’s allocation of E-water is then further examined using the E-water planning process in Chapter 8. The study explores how the calculative mechanisms framing E-water forecasts allow the abstract concept of E-water management to be visualised, familiarised and enacted, shaping actions mobilising the E-water management. The study highlights the importance of interessement devices, such as the Basin Plan, E-water guide and the MERI framework, in enrolling heterogeneous actants that enable the framing of calculative spaces to enable E-water planning and also manage the E-water use and resources from distance. The study also emphasises the involvement of qualculative decision-making and the high reliance on socio-technical devices to manage and monitor E-water at MDB. It also highlights some limitations of calculative mechanisms and some monitoring and compliance issues that have a significant loss of faith among enrolled actants, resulting in more fragile E-water and Basin Plan networks.
 
The study makes multiple contributions. It contributes to the ANT literature by examining the effects of calculative practices that weaken and create fragility in networks making them more likely to fail. The study also contributes to ANT by explaining the concept of “qualculative” decisions in efforts to manage water sustainably. The study also contributes to the environmental accounting literature by explaining the role of calculative practices in managing a river system by processes designed to mediate human-nature relationships in the Anthropocene. The study contributes to the sustainable development literature by explaining the abilities and limits of calculative mechanisms in developing a sensible interaction between the three pillars of sustainability: social, economic, and environmental. Finally, the study theorises the case materials by utilising the mixed concepts of ANT in relatively novel ways to seek to explain the human contribution to environmental change. Furthermore, the study provides practical implications for implementing the United Nation’s water action decade and ecosystem restoration at a regional and national level to ensure a sustainable future.