Lara Werbeloff

Using Policy and Regulatory Frameworks to Facilitate Water Transitions

There are persistent calls across policy, industry and academia for urban water transitions in order to deliver increased sustainability, liveability and resilience. However, realisation of such transformational change is difficult, and there are a number of undesirable or unsuccessful transition trajectories that can manifest. Drawing on a contemporary stormwater quality management transition in South-East Queensland, Australia, this qualitative research paper provides an empirical exploration of a transition in struggle. The paper examines why and how this transition trajectory unfolded, focusing specifically on the evolution of culture, structure and practice changes from the 1970s to the present-day. The paper makes two scholarly contributions, firstly confirming the dynamic nature of transformational change and indicating the need to design transition initiatives across the culture, structure and practice domains to co-evolve and thereby build a robust and mutually reinforcing transition foundation. The results also reveal the critical role of regulation in providing a safety net for the transition and enabling continued progress even when commitment to policy goals wavers. These results also provide practical insight for practitioners engaged in the implementation of transition processes, and reveal the need for transition advocates to deliberately and proactively engage with regulatory frameworks to embed a novel practice.

Institutional change to support regime transformation: Lessons from Australia's water sector

Institutional change is fundamental to regime transformation, and a necessary part of moving toward integrated water management. However, insight into the role of institutional change processes in such transitions is currently limited. A more nuanced understanding of institutional frameworks is necessary, both to advance understanding of institutional change in the context of transitions toward improved water management and to inform strategies for guiding such processes. To this end, we examine two contemporary cases of transformative change in Australias urban water sector, exploring the evolution of institutional change in each city. This paper offers insights into regime transformation, providing guidance on types of institutional structures and the ways structure-change initiatives can be sequenced to support a transition. The results reveal the importance of regulation in embedding regime change and suggest that engagement with structural frameworks should begin early in transition processes to ensure the timely introduction of supporting regulation. Our findings also highlight the inextricable link between culture-based and structure-based change initiatives, and the importance of using a diverse range of institutional change mechanisms in a mutually reinforcing way to provide a strong foundation for change. These findings provide a foundation for further scholarly examination of institutional change mechanisms, while also serving to inform the strategic activities of transition-oriented organizations and actors.

A Framework to Guide Transitions to Water Sensitive Cities

This chapter explores the transition challenges and opportunities facing urban water sectors globally, as pressures from urbanisation, climate change and ecological degradation drive new approaches to urban water management. Framed around the vision of a future Water Sensitive City and drawing on empirical evidence from a case study of storm-water quality management in Melbourne, Australia, this chapter presents a framework for benchmarking a city’s progress in its urban water transition. It provides a nuanced understanding of how these complex change processes unfold and identifies the enabling conditions that can be used to help steer change in urban water systems towards the envisioned water sensitive city.