What's different about this approach? Currently, the way we manage rivers, and the water they need, is very sector-based or one-dimensional. Rivers are much more than depressions in the landscape for moving water from headwaters or dams to those that consume it for agricultural production, industry or domestic use. They also have huge social, cultural and environmental values which tend to be overlooked or treated as after-thoughts. In particular what's overlooked is the economic importance of these other values, especially in rural Australia. Nature-based tourism, for example, is a huge industry in this country, and globally, yet how often do you hear politicians talking about the employment-generating potential of a healthy river or the capacity of healthy rivers to support regional businesses?

Another major weakness in how we are managing our rivers is that the responses being mobilised are, in the main, piecemeal, at too small a scale, not well integrated and short term in duration. Funding programs the Federal Government's environment flagship Caring for our Country program being a case in point encourage these types of approaches by setting targets that make the chances of gaining funding greater if you put forward actions that are bite-sized, focus on specific issues rather than take integrated approaches, and are doable within short timeframes.

To maintain a healthy and productive river system you need to manage the lot top to bottom and as long as funding organisations continue to ''cherry-pick'' parts of river systems to manage (bureaucrats like to call this prioritisation) then the problems will persist. Rivers require large-scale, integrated programs to see them productive and supporting river communities, economies and jobs.

But perhaps the greatest weakness comes from a failure to consult the true stakeholders of our rivers in an open and transparent way. Particular interest groups can sway water allocation and management decisions which in turn impact on local businesses, other landholders, recreational activities, cultural heritage values and so on. Those with clout get heard while the majority tend to be marginalised. It's time Australia adopted a different paradigm for river management one where the communities and landholders along them are all sitting around the same table to decide what's best for regional businesses (farm-based and other), the health of the river, for regional prosperity and wellbeing and for cultural heritage values. It has to be hoped that those drafting the new plan for the Murray-Darling Basin appreciate that regional Australia wants to be heard on these issues. They don't want to have yet more plans thrust upon them after token efforts were made at consultation.

For its part, RiverSmart is setting out to give these communities a louder voice in these planning processes. We are working with stakeholders along much of the Macquarie River in central NSW, in the ACT region and, soon, the lower Murray River in South Australia. We are there listening to what people see as the issues, what vision they have for their rivers, and helping them to seeking funding and expertise to take action themselves.

There is great frustration across the Murray-Darling Basin that government responses will not come soon enough and will not address all the problems. Buying water back from irrigators is not the silver bullet some would like us to believe. Yes, many of our rivers need more water available to them so that more natural flow patterns can be re-instated, but Penny Wong's cheque book alone will not bring our rivers back to life. The responses needed are more complex and costly than that, and this is why we need to be empowering and engaging river communities, landholders and businesses to take on large-scale, long-term, integrated and quite visionary programs of river rehabilitation.

It's also time for Australia's urban-dwellers to play their part in river recovery. After all, why should those feeding and clothing us have to bear the burden alone? We all have roles to play here.

In the coming weeks RiverSmart will hold the first of what we expect to be a series of awareness-raising events. These will take the form of ''paddle-a-thon'' type events to give people a chance to get to know their rivers and understand the challenges, but to also send a message to decision-makers that rivers are important community assets more than channels for moving water around. The first of these, Macquarie Blue, will take place on the Macquarie River in November. Plans are being developed for a similar event when we launch the Capital Region RiverSmart initiative later in the year.

Finally, in October of this year, during National Water Week, the International River Health Conference will be held in Canberra. Several thousand school kids will be here to focus on these issues. Canberra's sad and sorry lakes and rivers will not showcase our credentials as we would hope. Maybe the time has come for the ACT and surrounding communities, governments and businesses to show they care and get behind a major clean-up and rehabilitation effort of our lakes and rivers. We can then lay claim to being not only the national capital and bush capital but also the river management capital.

Dr Bill Phillips is chief executive of RiverSmart Australia.