Indigenous people have coexisted with Australia’s vast and ancient groundwater systems for thousands of generations. Their knowledge extends back through deep time, before our current climate and waterways. It offers insights that Western science is only beginning to quantify.

When rain falls, some can seep into the ground, becoming groundwater. This water can remain underground for as little as a few months, or for millions of years. Eventually it is taken up by plants, or flows into springs, rivers and the ocean.

Australia’s groundwater resources underpin the economic growth and prosperity of the country. But they are under greater pressure than ever before. Legal battles over water in the NT, including extraction licences, highlights the rapid pace at which decisions over the future of water are being made.

Our new paper shows the “business as usual” approach to groundwater science and management risks perpetuating colonial injustices. And it compromises our ability to manage water sustainably as the climate grows warmer and population increases.

Most Australians are aware of terra nullius, the legal fiction that Australia belonged to no-one before European settlement. But very few know about aqua nullius, – “water belonging to no-one”. This is a similar fiction suggesting Traditional Owners had no rights to the water they had used for millennia.

We show how the legacy of aqua nullius remains embedded within contemporary........

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