Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents innovations in traditional approaches to water policy, with a focus on major contemporary mechanisms based on property, science and economics. It investigates the concepts of stewardship and sustainability and their potential for water policy innovation, from philosophical and legal angles. The book then examines innovation in different water policy contexts – rural and urban – drawing on insights from psychology. It also explores the democratic and material turns in scholarship, and their potential for water policy innovation, especially place agency and collaborative governance, through processes of policy learning. The book discusses the idea of resilience to water management in agriculture and examines household water use. It also explores the history of water management in a catchment of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB), utilising legal and policy analysis, as well as environmental and interview data, to map a path for future policy.