Building community trust to drive collective action on enhancing water quality in regional communities

This PhD project, framed within the One Basin CRC and in partnership with the Cotton Research and Development Corporation (CRDC), addresses water quality management in regional communities across Australia. Faced with historical distrust and a lack of constructive dialogue spaces, this research aims to design a framework integrating technical, social, and policy dimensions to foster trust and drive collective action.

About this project

Water quality is a critical and sensitive issue for regional communities, intersecting directly with agricultural productivity, environmental health, and community well-being. However, efforts to address this challenge are frequently hindered by historical distrust and a lack of safe, constructive spaces for dialogue and engagement. To overcome these barriers, there is an urgent need to establish non-punitive mechanisms that foster transparency and enable proactive, community-led responses before environmental tensions escalate into crises.

Addressing this need, the project aims to co-design a comprehensive framework that integrates technical, social, and policy dimensions to facilitate transparent conversations and drive collective action. The research will explore what constitutes a “safe” conversation in conflicted environments, measure the socioeconomic and intrinsic value of collaboration, and determine the exact roles stakeholders can play in building community trust.

To achieve this, the methodology will adopt a transdisciplinary approach combining social science, economics, and environmental science. The research program will first identify regional and industry-specific factors influencing trust-building and data sharing. It will then develop safe dialogue spaces using non-punitive tools, such as regional “water quality report cards” that present general conditions without singling out individual organizations. Furthermore, secure protocols will be created to share sensitive data while providing adequate time for response before public scrutiny. Finally, the framework will be implemented through a pilot program in Southern Queensland to measure the real-world environmental and economic value of collaboration, ultimately delivering modular and scalable models that can be adapted to other catchments and diverse landscape issues across Australia.

Expected Outcomes

The project will deliver a validated co-design framework for collective action in regional water resources. Expected outcomes include secure protocols for sensitive data sharing, diagnostic tools for assessing regional trust barriers, and a proven methodological model from the Southern Queensland pilot. Ultimately, the research expects to achieve a quantifiable increase in community collaboration, reduced socio-environmental conflict, and a highly scalable, modular governance model applicable to other sensitive landscape challenges across Australia.