Australian Water Management Review Vol 1 2010 | Page 8

Building Capacity
to Manage our Water

In Australia we have been reforming
the way we manage our water
for the last two decades, built on
agreements going back more than
a century. The current drought and
the threatened additional impacts of
climate change have strengthened
support for acceleration of the reform
process. Agreement on the transfer
of some powers from the States to
the Commonwealth Government
is an excellent example of this
determination.
The reforms have included substantial
restructuring of the institutions and
agencies with water management
responsibilities, and the diversification
of private sector involvement in the
water sector. Perhaps an unintended
consequence of the process, and other
factors outside the sector, has been the
simultaneous decline in our capacity
to implement the reforms. Now that
investments in the water sector,
including major infrastructure, have
been revived and look set to maintain
healthy levels for the foreseeable
future, building this capacity for the
future is even more important.
The shortages in water sector skills were
starting to be noticed in some quarters
in the early 2000s. Initiatives such as
the International Centre of Excellence
in Water Resources Management
(ICE WaRM) were being conceived to
address the challenges and opportunities
emerging. ICE WaRM was established in
2004 to focus on education, training and
research in water management, at a time
when many were yet to acknowledge
that climate and water issues were
increasingly serious constraints on national
economic and social development.
The physical effects of water scarcity,
particularly in the major Murray-Darling
basin, have focused attention on the
dramatic and immediate aspects. But
water management issues are seldom
solved with short-term measures. As
well as dealing with the crises of the
moment, decision-makers have to look
to the longer-term questions as new
initiatives are to be implemented. One
such question is: how are we going to
attract and appropriately skill the tens of
thousands of new entrants into water
sector occupations, and re-skill those
remaining, for the challenges ahead?

Water Management Review 2010

ICE WaRM had a head start to make
contributions to this agenda, and has been
building momentum to meet the emerging
demands, from organisations active in the
water sector, and from individuals wanting
to advance their careers in water.
For example, in the higher education
sector ICE WaRM’s flagship is the Master
of Water Resources Management,
with Graduate Certificate and Graduate
Diploma options, available since 2006.
This multiple-award-winning programme
is offered collaboratively by several
universities in diverse modes of delivery.
The structure is very flexible, providing
a solid grounding in sustainable water
management while allowing students to
develop specialist knowledge and skills.
One of those specialist streams is in
water planning, a new initiative since
2009 supported by the National Water
Commission. This has added to the
considerable list of elective courses on
offer at postgraduate level.
The demands on many currently
employed in F