This paper explores environmental water management as a social process of navigating conflicting
interests through a distributive justice lens. Environmental water management can achieve substantial
ecological outcomes and address ongoing river degradation caused by past management and climate
change; however it also causes specific and substantial burdens and benefits to different groups of
stakeholders. Given that in most developed countries the majority of land is under private tenure,
environmental watering must have active cooperation of private landholders to achieve its ecological
outcomes and thus it must effectively deal with an array of vested interests. Australia’s reforms aimed
at reallocating water from production to the environment have resulted in significant considerable
volumes of environmental water.
In the state of New South Wales, this water is managed by the state and national governments with the
help of five Environmental Water Advisory Groups made up of a wide representation of interests. In this
paper, we explore the perceptions of environmental, government, irrigator and grazing representatives,
which demonstrate conflicting principles over how environmental water should be distributed. We detail
how government water managers reconcile competing distributive principles of equity (ensuring that no
one is disproportionally affected or benefits unduly), need (achieving environmental outcomes) and efficiency
(prioritizing operational feasibility) in order to maintain the social acceptability of environmental
water.