Why did we do it? The Marne Saunders Prescribed Water Resources Area (PWRA), a Southern Australian catchment, is experiencing declining groundwater & surface water conditions, prompting calls from the community for action. The multiplicity of water uses and values underscores the importance of effectively engaging community values and the best available scientific knowledge and information to enhance the defensibility of water planning decisions.
What did we do? The Landscape Board undertook a novel three step multi-criteria analysis (MCA) process for ranking community-derived options for addressing water resources risks. The first step engaged the community to discover their goals for water resources management and identify potential strategies for achieving these goals. The second step engaged Departmental experts, including scientists and policy analysts, through structured expert elicitation, to quantify the benefits, risks and trade-offs for each of the proposed options. The third step re-engaged community participants to review the output of expert elicitation and weight the benefits and risks associated with each of the community-derived strategies.
What have we learned? When engaged throughout the analytic process, the community found the MCA approach to be transparent and intuitive. The community particularly appreciated the opportunity for a level of participation and input having a material impact upon findings. This, in turn, provided the Landscape Board with confidence to act upon the findings of the assessment.
Why does it matter? MCA and risk-based approaches provide a well-established framework for decision-making given conflicting objectives, criteria and uncertainty. While appealing from a decision theoretic perspective, achieving acceptable community buy-in with analytic tools can be challenging. This study provides an example of a MCA specifically tailored to maximise the benefits of effective community engagement.