Stakeholders Attitudes Towards Water Resources Management on Plantation Forestry in Australia

Plantation forestry has existed and shared water resources in Australia since the late of 19th century; however, little consideration has been given to its impact upon water provision.  Incentives exist to push forestry expansion to meet emergency of carbon offset, such as carbon credit trading. There are many studies evidencing that it significantly influences the sustainability of the water resources and thereby pose a threat to water dependent ecosystems. Under the National Water Initiative (NWI), governments require to implement a series of measures to account for and manage the water interception effects of land use change by no later than 2011. Accordingly, South Australia, as the first state, has put plantation forestry as a water affecting activity into water allocation plan. It is heralding that management of water resource impacts of plantation forests is currently in operation in South Australia, and much institution innovation on forest water use will not only in South Australia, but in other states, even in other countries, such as China, thus the research can offer empirical evidence for future policies.

This study will investigate the attitude, belief and value issues of major stakeholders towards inclusion of forestry as a water affecting activity into the sustainable water allocation plans and explore how they are impacted by this policy change process. It is conducted in three stages: 1) telephone interview with plantation forestry companies 2) face-to-face interview with policy planners 3) survey with other water users except for plantation forest companies. The data collection is underway and the stage 1) and 2) will be finished by January,2012.