Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines how the Baaka-Darling River and Menindee Lakes have been politically, materially and discursively constructed as a 'sacrifice zone' within the modern governance of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. Drawing on a Critical Discourse Analysis of more than three decades of local media, the paper traces how state actors normalise ecological degradation, frame ecological losses as ‘natural’, and advance technocratic infrastructure solutions that obscure systemic over-extraction and governance failures. Using Hajer’s concept of argumentative discourse, the study compares official narratives of efficiency, progress and sustainability with counter narratives articulated by Baaka-Darling River residents, water-justice advocates and Barkindji community leaders. These community-produced narratives contest the river’s expendability, foregrounding ecocultural connections to the Baaka-Darling, and expose how Basin reforms have sustained racialised and geographic hierarchies while diminishing Indigenous water rights. By situating water conflict in the Baaka-Darling within broader theories of sacrifice, extractivism and settler-colonial governance, the article shows how sacrificial logics have shaped the region’s environmental trajectory and how grassroots mobilisation works to unsettle these hierarchies. The findings highlight that sacrifice zones are not static or resigned spaces, but dynamic arenas of political negotiation in which local knowledge, Indigenous authority and social movement action reimagine more just and ecologically grounded water futures.
Source: Water Security
Author: Dan Schulz
Institution: Australian National University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,534
Funder: Australian Research Council
OpenAlex ID: W7161790462