Zone of Sacrifice: The dewatering of the Baaka-Darling River & Menindee Lakes and its consequences for river communities

Abstract

This thesis responds to the dewatering of the Baaka-Darling River, Australia's third-longest river. It does so through critical analyses of the political, cultural, economic, and discursive systems that have normalised ecosystem decline and cultural losses within the region. Focusing on the Murray-Darling Basin, one of the most contested and complex river systems globally, the study traces how colonial resource logics have shaped contemporary policy frameworks that render regions like the Baaka-Darling River invisible to regulatory institutions.

Despite major water reforms and billions of dollars in public investment to address water inequalities in the Basin, contemporary water management has been defined by policy outcomes and institutional practices that privilege extractive development, even as progressive water reforms claim to advance equity, environmental sustainability and Indigenous water rights. Repeated ecological disasters, including water quality crises and mass fish kills since the 1990s, mark an ongoing collapse of ecocultural networks in the Baaka-Darling River, and are normalised by repeated policy failures and official discourses. For the Barkindji, the First Peoples of this region, this collapse constitutes cultural genocide, as the river is their literal lifeblood; a living ancestor and inseparable from identity, lore, and life.

Using a political ecology lens, the thesis reveals how state and corporate actors throughout the history of Australian water policy development have co-constructed the Baaka-Darling River as a 'sacrifice zone,' where water is systematically transferred from 'low value' areas to 'high value' areas, as defined by institutional precepts. This thesis reveals the sacrifice zone as not only fundamental to exploitative agricultural practices in the Murray-Darling Basin, but to the 'success story' of Australia's environmental water reforms. This system of inequalities has led to the formation of the Baaka-Darling Water Justice Movement, a coalition of place-based actors working to challenge the depoliticisation of water management, restore ecocultural networks and establish ethical governance. Using grounded, place-based methodologies, this thesis interactively maps the emergence of this movement and examines how new social movements relate to historical injustice and reshape broader social relations within settler-colonial water regimes. Show more