Heterotic water policy futures using place agency, vernacular knowledge, transformative learning and syncretic governance

This chapter draws on a case study of the Namoi catchment of New South Wales (NSW), Australia, including interviews conducted with a purposive sample of key stakeholders, irrigators and landholders. The Namoi Catchment Management Authority (CMA), the watershed-based administrative unit responsible for water from 2004 until 2014, described and committed to a process of adaptive management based on single, double and triple-loop learning, although their description of triple-loop learning was focused on people and processes rather than values and paradigms. There is a need to move away from 'broad abstractions' towards 'local realities' and towards tailoring bespoke and unique solutions. Re-locating water, recognising its genius loci, would counter the historic and current de-territorialisation and dematerialisation that occurs through conceptual abstraction and technical control. Places and water have their own agency and may also exercise their agency through people – through local stories and appreciations.