Introduction

It has become a feature of the governance lexicon to refer to narrowly focused, single-issue policy domains as ‘silos’. In its original context, the word refers to vertical grain storages that sit alongside each other, but are compartmentalised and largely function separately. From a governance perspective that embraces complexity and holism, the term ‘silo’ is often used pejoratively to denote approaches that can't deal with messy, real-world situations. One could extend the metaphor to the fact that most silos are filled from the top and emptied from the bottom: a reflection of the top-down nature of siloed policy domains. How is it that silos have become so entrenched in our current governance regimes? Silos could result from efforts to simplify management tasks, or from a tendency to classify and conceptually delineate our environment, or perhaps they emerge from a more fundamental nature–culture divide.

It is clear that the silo approach to governance can lead to serious unintended consequences. For example, in the well-studied case of the Kissimmee River, part of the Florida Everglades in the United States, the river and its surrounding floodplains were historically managed for the primary goal of flood control. The channel of the river was even refashioned into a canal for increased hydraulic efficiency, which severely damaged the ecological integrity of the river (Koebel 1995). A large-scale restoration program is currently being carried out to restore the floodplain and river ecosystem, which some have described as a successful transition to a more sustainable trajectory (Olsson et al. 2006). This is probably an extreme example, but it demonstrates the possible consequences of managing to one goal: in this case, flood protection. In Australia, there is a long history of separation, nowhere clearer than in water politics, where water itself has become a disembodied entity: