Governance issues in developing and implementing offsets for water management benefits: Can preliminary evaluation guide implementation effectiveness?

Abstract

This article explores governance issues in developing innovative pollutant offset programs by focusing on a case study being piloted at the Gisborne Recycled Water Plant in Jackson Creek, a rural subcatchment of the Maribyrnong River north of Melbourne, Australia. The article offers preliminary lessons from the ongoing design and anticipated challenges facing this innovative program based on reflec-tions from the literature and project progress to-date. This case exemplifies a form of adaptive governance—an approach well suited to achieving broad sustainabil-ity objectives—and for which an early assessment is both appropriate and oppor-tune. Adaptive governance is characterized by government..