Local actors, global lessons in safeguarding rivers: implementing the advice in the National Water Reform 2020 Inquiry Report

ABSTRACT The Australian Government has committed to water reform, including safeguarding the Murray Darling Basin, providing an opportunity to examine legal responses to water scarcity and environmental degradation that are developing globally and being used to influence how rivers are managed or protected. Using a conceptual framework that links socio-legal analysis to theories of ‘institutional work’, this paper analyses the development of transnational water norms like The Human Right to Water and Rights for Rivers, highlights the institutional work of local actors and the role of transnational water norms in that work, and uses the Productivity Commission’s National Water Reform 2020 Inquiry Report to examine opportunities for water reform in Australia.