Regional Community Forums
The MDBA has established 6 Regional Community Forums to hear from people about their stretch of the river, and their local region and community.
Basin communities hold generations of local river knowledge and experience and the MDBA aims to tap into this to build on our approach to water management from a local to a Basin-scale.
The 6 regions for the forums are:
- Border Region QLD/NSW
- Central West region
- Riverina
- Upper Murray, Mid Murray and Goulburn Murray Irrigation District
- Sunraysia and Lower Darling
- SA Murray
Participants can access their portal by clicking the relevant link above.
We welcome new participants at any time. If you are interested in joining a forum group, please email the relevant contact on the right, or phone the MDBA engagement hotline for more information.
The first round of forums was held in July 2021 and a further 6 forums have since been held. Feedback from participants has been encouraging. You can read more about the outcomes on the News tab below.
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August 2023 - Forum #7
The next forum meetings are being planned for August 2023 and will focus on the Roadmap to the 2026 Basin Plan Review, as part of MDBA's ongoing commitment to listen, learn and make decisions based on what we've heard, in conjunction with the best available knowledge and evidence during the Review process.Forum #6
The focus of the meetings was to introduce and seek community feedback on the Murray–Darling Basin Outlook (the Outlook), which forms part of the suite of products the MDBA will be producing over the 3-year journey towards the Basin Plan Review in 2026.
Click here to learn more about the roadmap to the Basin Plan Review.
Participants heard presentations on the context, purpose, and delivery plan for the Outlook, and how community feedback is expected to shape the analysis of current and future condition of the Murray–Darling Basin. Community members were also introduced to the proposed approach to developing the Outlook, with a brief overview of the proposed indicators for environmental, cultural, social and economic values in the Murray–Darling Basin.
Word cloud from previous meeting -
First forum meetings held
The first round of forum meetings was held in July 2021 and saw about 1,000 comments collected from the more than 100 virtual participants across all 6 sessions. Since then the forums have had a strong focus on condition monitoring and sought to understand how the MDBA can improve monitoring with stronger guidance from Basin communities.
Participants included landholders, scientists, First Nations, community leaders, and those with a general passion for their local waterways.
Some of the key messages to emerge across all 6 forum groups included:
the importance of a connected Basin system
knowledge sharing across all levels of the community
the importance of a healthy river to a healthy community.
The word cloud here shows a quick snapshot of the most frequent words written by participants across all forum groups during their meetings.
Feedback was analysed and the information and insights collected, to develop a range of monitoring indicators to help give a better signal of the social, cultural, economic, and environmental health of the Basin.
These community-led indicators formed a key foundation of the Basin Condition Monitoring Program (BCMP). Running through to December 2025, this program consists of 15 projects across 5 themes: Cultural, Economic, Environmental, Hydrology and Social.
The next forum meetings are being planned for August 2023 and will focus on the Roadmap to the 2026 Basin Plan Review, as part of MDBA's ongoing commitment to listen, learn and make decisions based on what we've heard, in conjuction with the best available knowledge and evidence during the Review process.
Forum regions
Indicative map of forum regions