Sustainable cities & regions
Better local water systems
Our MSDI Water team worked with Melbourne Water to embed principles of safety, reconciliation, diversity and access to create inclusive practices that benefit their own workforce, as well as create meaningful outcomes for the broader community through the organisation’s service delivery.
Water Sensitive Cities Australia (WSCA) is now implementing their ambitious mainstreaming strategy to see water sensitive cities principles and practices applied in every city, every day. This year, with the support of WSCA’s partners, such as Monash Climate Change Communications Research Hub, the team has been delivering a national community water literacy project to foster better community impact on our water systems, as well as a lifecycle costs project to better understand the cost to build, operate and maintain green infrastructure.
National Environmental Science Program
MSDI is delivering a suite of projects in the National Environmental Science Program’s (NESP) Sustainable Communities and Waste Hub. The Aqua Nullius project designed and delivered a series of workshops for Indigenous and non-Indigenous water practitioners in the Murray Darling Basin. The workshops developed everyone's expertise in understanding and resisting the impacts of aqua nullius with the shared desire to save the area’s dying rivers and water systems. Following the workshops, Indigenous Elder water officers were more able to articulate and advance sovereign water rights. The participating non-Indigenous public servants have a better understanding of First Nations water rights and how the settler-state institutions, laws, policies and programs, in which they are involved, perpetuate aqua nullius. High engagement in the workshops shows the value of creating these spaces to share knowledge and encourage change.
The Water team is also delivering a NESP project that is looking at how to support water sensitive and liveable communities in regional, rural and remote Australia. It’s been a year of bringing together stakeholders and listening to communities to define a model that will connect First Nations people, institutions, Industry, governments and funding, to co-ordinate effort, build skills and benefit communities in ways that work in the regional and rural context – because what works in the city doesn’t always suit the country. Another of our NESP projects concerns the management of hazardous waste, substances and pollutants. The project, in collaboration with CSIRO and Sustainability Victoria, is generating high-quality data related to the mass and potential availability of chemicals in our waste streams to assist safe recovery and reuse of resources obtained from wastes and enable national resource recovery targets.
Water sensitive regions
WSCA’s international program aims to spread the use of water sensitive infrastructure to help urban centres in Southeast Asia’s Greater Mekong region become more inclusive, liveable and resilient. As part of this program, WSCA delivered a regional conference and training for the Resilient Urban Centres and Surrounds program to identify the opportunities and the emerging practice for advancing nature-based solutions in the region.
The MSDI Water team partnered with Yayasan Plan Indonesia to apply gender equitable and socially inclusive Integrated Water Management (IWM) practices in a water planning project in Sumbawa, Indonesia in order to create richer outcomes for minority groups within local communities, including women, children, people with disabilities and Indigenous peoples. We supported the establishment and ongoing multi-stakeholder inclusive IWM forum in Sumbawa and produced guidelines that can support other projects.
Informing efficient energy and waste practices
We launched our Energy Upgrades for Australian Homes project as part of the RACE for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre to make it easier for Australian households to upgrade the comfort and energy efficiency of their homes. The project will work with people and communities to achieve transformative impact across the whole system, including enabling policy, place-based delivery models, behaviour change, existing housing stock assessments, and supply chain capability.
The New Zealand Ministry for the Environment engaged BehaviourWorks Australia to identify relevant behavioural insights and principles on waste minimisation communication. The evidence was collated into the Ministry’s Best Practice Communication Guide for Waste Minimisation and is being applied as part of the government’s strategy to improve the behavioural effectiveness of central and local government waste-related communication.
