# **1. Background and Introduction**

Integrated water resource management (IWRM) and organizing it primarily at the river basin level are two of the most common and widely repeated recommendations in the water resources literature of the last decade if not longer (Allee 1988; Galloway 1997; McDonald and Kay 1988; World Bank 1993). Basin management is often associated with the concept of decentralization, of managing water resources at the “lowest appropriate level.” (See, e.g., International Conference on Water and the Environment 1992; Mody 2001.) Several conceptual arguments have been presented in favor of decentralization in water resource management, and basin-level management in particular: that the whole array of resources and use patterns in the basin will be taken into account, public participation will be greater and broader, management decisions will be based on better knowledge of local conditions, and so on.

Empirical studies of river basin management systems provide opportunities to examine the claims made for basin-level integrated resources management, and to explore factors that appear to influence its implementation and outcomes. In this research project, with the support of the World Bank, the project team has searched for those factors and their relationships to river basin management in two ways: with a survey of river basin organizations throughout the world, and with case studies of eight river basins analyzed in greater detail. Some of those eight cases have emerged recently, as in the Warta River basin of Poland and the Fraser River basin of Canada. Others have long histories of basin-scale institutions, such as the Guadalquivir River basin in Spain and the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia.

This paper focuses on analysis of the evolution and current status of river basin management institutions in the Murray-Darling Basin. Only brief descriptions of the basin’s physical characteristics, social and economic profile, and historical development are included in this paper.

# **2. Analytical Framework**

To analyze the data gathered for this project from the case studies and from the survey of river basin organizations, the project team has developed a framework that identifies a number of political and institutional factors which may be associated with the emergence, sustainability, and success or failure of decentralized approaches to integrated water resource management at the basin scale. These factors, and their hypothesized relationships with basin management in a country that has decentralized or is attempting to decentralize water resource management institutions, are derived from the institutional analysis literature relating to water or other natural resource management and to decentralized systems (especially Ostrom 1990, 1992; also Agrawal 2000; Alaerts 1999; Blomquist and Schlager 1999; Bromley 1999; Easter and Hearne 1993; Wunsch 1991). Our information gathering and analysis focuses on the following sets of variables.

- Contextual factors and initial conditions

- Characteristics of the decentralization process

- Characteristics of central government/basin-level relationships and capacities

- The internal configuration of basin-level institutional arrangements

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