Jess McLean, BSc/BA (Hons), PGradCert Env

PhD Candidate

Madsen Building, Rm 462
Phone: +61 2 9351 7179
Fax: +61 2 9351 3644
Email: jmcl2280@usyd.edu.au

Supervisor
Dr Bill Pritchard

PhD title: Water Justice in the Ord Catchment; Political Ecology Analysis.

Jess McLean’s research interests include environmental justice, appropriate water management, and community development. Her PhD research examines transformations in society-water relations in the Kimberley that stem from both physical and social reconfigurations. Physically, river impoundments have dramatically changed the Ord catchment with more stable year round flows replacing seasonal fluctuations. These physical transformations have also changed society-water relations in the region. Irrevocable changes to Indigenous ways of being have arisen from the transformations in the collection, storage, allocation and use of water in the Ord basin. One cause of these changes is the reduced access to country, an outcome of both the storage of water in Lakes Argyle and Kununurra and the increase in agricultural production.

Water justice is still not a reality in many rural and remote Indigenous contexts and appropriate acknowledgement of Indigenous water rights has not occurred in many Australian catchments to date. Evidence of this in the Ord catchment is the lack of adequate water supply and sanitation for some Indigenous communities, despite the increased freshwater availability overall in the Basin. The undervaluing of cultural differences relating to water is argued to be an antecedent to this injustice. An important theme of Jess’ research is investigating whether remedying this, perhaps through a cultural flows regime, may bring about a more just distribution of water resources in the Ord Basin.

• McLean, J. 2005. ‘Water Supply and Sanitation in Rural and Remote Indigenous contexts: A water justice analysis’, Environmental Research Event, Hobart, 29th Nov- 2nd Dec 2005.
• Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2003, Bringing them home Education Module: Learning about the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children From Their Families. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Sydney. Available online