As the Australian Stream Management conference achieves its 30th Anniversary, and the conference theme being Living and evolving with change, we reflected on the last 30 years of waterway management in Greater Melbourne as a case study, where all three authors have been active over this period. We describe how the context and approach to waterway management changed, and highlight key moments that have propelled us forward or held us back as an industry.
We provide complementary perspectives from a management authority, academic and consultant. Drawing on contrasting experiences, we captured evolving issues and priorities, changes to strategic planning, works programs, monitoring, and stakeholder engagement. This identified points in time where major gains in improving waterway health were made (e.g. stormwater targets), or conversely, challenges that slowed progress (e.g. industry capacity).
Factors that helped or hindered the evolution of waterway management include enabling governance structures, strategic management frameworks to focus effort and justify public investment, collaborative research to build knowledge and establish ‘trusted voices’, champions to advocate for change, fluctuating industry risk appetite, economic climate and political will. Community crises were also important e.g. millennium drought, major floods.
There is much we can be proud of over the past 30 years, but also much to be learned from what didn’t go well. This paper tries to draw upon the wisdom of hindsight to better propel our industry forward. In a companion paper by the same authors, we explore how these lessons might strengthen stream management over the next 30 years.