Water Stewardship Australia (WSA) has completed its report on the recent full field trial of the Australian Water Stewardship Standard (Draft 2). The trial involved working with Dairy Australia, Tatura Milk Industries and the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority (GBCMA). The trial was supported by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA). The report makes a number of recommendations for ongoing development of water stewardship standards. It also observes a number of areas where existing practices in the region are good and where changes could improve current practice. Importantly, the trial has focused on how to deal with complexity of compliance requirements for small producers and how the Australian Standard can work with existing systems. The GBCMA found the water stewardship system could have considerable natural resource management benefits for the region. For Dairy Australia, the trial provided an opportunity to assess the performance of existing tools such as its Dairy Self-Assessment Tool and inform the development of targets and action plans in the industry’s sustainability framework. A summary report is available here.
The full report will be available shortly from the WSA website.