What?

The Coastal Waterways and Wetlands Alliance (CWWA) is a network of community-based environmental groups that actively steward estuaries, estuarine lakes, inlets, bays and coastal edges.

We recognise that waterways are not isolated environmental assets. They are interconnected systems; groundwater to surface water, freshwater to saltwater, headwaters to estuary. Planning, extraction, drainage and coastal development in one part of the system will inevitably affect stability, resilience and ecological function elsewhere.

We necessarily take a long term view. Our focus is policy advocacy and practical intervention to:

• embed climate resilience and nature-based adaptation in statutory and strategic land use planning,
• protect coastal and estuarine systems from avoidable harm, and
• ensure waterways are given physical space to move, recharge, flood, erode and recover.

We treat waterways and coasts as living, dynamic systems. When they are constrained, over-extracted, channelled or armoured, they inevitably fail; often starting at the mouth and working upstream. When they are protected and allowed to function, they support ecological health, liveability, cultural values, and local economies.

The Coastal Waterways and Wetlands Alliance is part of the broader Concerned Waterways Alliance.

Who?

Our membership is place-based, technically informed, and deeply embedded in community. Many of our members have worked on their waterways for decades in partnership with councils, catchment authorities, CMAs, Traditional Owners, scientists and agency staff.

Why?

We share three things: deep local knowledge, a real passion for waterways and a clear view of systemic failure.

Across Victoria’s rivers, estuaries and coastal margins we are seeing recurring patterns:

• reactive planning at the coast and floodplain instead of anticipatory, risk-based planning,
• over-extraction of water and chronic under-allocation of environmental flows,
• coastal erosion, shoreline loss and land subsidence,
• escalating pressure on ageing drainage systems,
• increasing reliance on groundwater and aquifers that are already stressed.

These are not “local issues”. They reflect a systemic policy gap: development, water allocation and infrastructure decisions are still being made as if waterways are isolated, fixed assets, rather than living systems with legal, cultural and ecological value.

By working together we:

• map common risks across catchments and coasts,
• share data, on-ground observations and practical solutions,
• identify planning and policy settings that are not keeping pace with climate risk,
• hold decision-makers accountable to evidence and legislated obligations, and
• advocate for repair and restoration, not just mitigation.

We speak with lived authority. Our member groups are on Country, in the field, often witnessing change in real time. We have decades of longitudinal knowledge of riparian/coastal habitat, development and erosion hotspots, flood behaviour, fish kills, significant vegetation/habitat loss, acid sulfate exposure, saline intrusion, and groundwater decline. That is knowledge government strategies often rely on but rarely centre.

Our purpose is to establish waterway health as fundamental resilience infrastructure for communities, rather than afterthought to growth. We work constructively with government, regulators and industry to advance evidence-based, climate-ready, legally durable solutions that protect, restore and future-proof estuaries, rivers and coasts.

In short, we are asserting an independent voice for coastal waterways early in the planning and policy process, before approvals are signed and impacts become irreversible.

• Gippsland Environment Group Inc
• Friends Of The Barwon
• Friends of Steele Creek
• Kooyongkoot Alliance

The Concerned Waterways Alliance acknowledges that the lands and waterways of southern Victoria are the unceded territories of Easter Marr, Wadawurrung, Wurundjeri, Gunaikurnai and Bunurong peoples. We pay our respect to their Ancestors, who cared for Country since time began, and to all Traditional Owners who continue to speak and care for their Country.