Abstract
This work considers a central theme that arises when community engagement processes 'get stuck' as a result of divisions in the community and how to understand the matters that are implicit and explicit in conflict to facilitate its resolution. The issue at hand in this project is water allocation, which is becoming increasingly contentious both globally and within Australia. A participant action research approach is used to ultimately develop and evaluate a best practice consensus building framework for water allocation and use which takes account of underlying interests and values in two case study sites in Queensland, Australia - the Lockyer valley and Lower Balonne catchment. This paper describes the first steps in this exploration, the use of an innovative qualitative data generating technique - photovoice - to uncover conflict interests and values related to water. We describe the richness of this method to inform stakeholder interests and values and to monitor them throughout an engagement process about water allocation. This will contribute to community and institutional capacity to prevent and resolve conflicts in water management in agriculture and trade-offs between environmental and consumptive uses of water, and public and private interests.