This strategy will guide the delivery of the enhanced Resilient Rivers including  SEQ City Deal funding, enabling transparent, efficient and effective decision making for the investment in on-ground action that achieves real outcomes for the region. The Strategy adopts a whole-of-system, values-based approach to management, which considers management at multiple scales in the context of the ecosystem services and values provided by waterways and wetlands. Developed through comprehensive consultation across 19 organisations and with First Nations peoples, the Strategy recognises people as central to decision making and promotes management responses that achieve multiple objectives.  

In addition, the Strategy recognises opportunities to leverage additional funding and investment through the collaborative partnership model that underpins RRSEQ, for the betterment of SEQ’s waterways and wetlands, creating regional jobs, supporting local communities and facilitating economic growth and development.  

This Strategy builds on the success of Resilient Rivers to date, captured within case studies which celebrate the innovation, hard work and collaboration of local people all over South East Queensland.  

The Strategy aligns with and advances the objectives of numerous regional, State and international plans and policies. At a regional scale, the 2023 update to the South East Queensland Regional Plan, Shaping SEQ 2017, directly calls out Resilient Rivers to provide water sensitive communities with a strategy to protect and sustainably manage the region’s catchments. Resilient Rivers is also identified as a key program to achieving the Brisbane 2032 Legacy Strategy, Elevate 2042. This strategy recognises the intrinsic importance of healthy lands and waterways, seeking continual improvement in riverine, estuarine and marine water quality, and provides further opportunity for investment spurred by the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games, Brisbane 2032.  

The improved coordination and management of SEQ catchments through this Strategy will also support the maintenance and improvement of the ecological character of South East Queensland’s internationally listed Ramsar site – Moreton Bay.  

The RRSEQ Waterways and Wetlands Investment Strategy was officially launched by the Hon. Leanne Linard MP, Minister for the Environment and the Great Barrier Reef, on Friday, 1 December 2023.