SPECIAL SECTION: Australia's environmental challenges Rivers and freshwater ecosystems are in trouble, which deeply affects communities who depend on them (1) and undermines international commitments to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals. The flawed assumption of aqua nullius is comprehensively embedded within the settler-state legal, regulatory, and institutional arrangements for water management in the MDB. Water governance in this transbound-ary river system in southeastern Australia, seen by some as a gold standard for managing water scarcity, has nonetheless failed to meet environmental water recovery targets, despite the investment of AUD$13 billion. In the MDB, pathways toward the cultural water paradigm include increasing Indigenous representation in water governance (such as the recent appointment of an Aboriginal member to the board of the MDB Authority), joint management agreements, collaboration on environmental flows, and holistic land and water management (see the second box). [Extracted from the article]