BY SARA PHILLIPS for ABC Environment
From the red dust and slow pace of outback Queensland, past the carpeted halls of Parliament House, to the thunder of the surf at the Coorong, the Murray-Darling River system manages to flow through so many aspects of Australian life.
This week the much-anticipated Murray-Darling Basin Plan will be released. This document aims to overhaul the way that water is parcelled out to various interest groups along the entire length of Australia’s largest river system. In making these changes it aims to stop the environmental degradation that is occurring and ensure a sustainable future for our farmers.
It’s a plan that Australia cannot afford to stuff up.
The Murray-Darling contributes an estimated $15 billion to our economy each year in agriculture, making up nearly 40 per cent of our whole agricultural output. It takes up 14 per cent of our land, some one million square kilometres, and incorporates four of the five most populous states in the nation.
It is truly one of the world’s great river systems. But the Murray-Darling has one attribute that sets it apart from most of the other famous rivers of the world: it’s 100 per cent dinky-di, true blue, Aussie-Aussie-Oi Australian.
Think of the world’s other great rivers. With the exception of the Yangtze River in China, and the Mississippi River in the USA, most of the world’s great rivers flow through multiple countries.
The Nile flows through several African countries on its way to the Egyptian delta. As the Los Angeles Times reported recently, water entitlement changes at one end upsets thousands of lives downstream and upstream and threatens international relations.
The ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program this week detailed similar problems with South-East Asia’s great river, the Mekong: Laos’s hydroelectricity plans threaten the livelihood of humans and animals far beyond Laos’s borders.
And the giant Amazon River falls off the back of the Peruvian Andes and skirts the border of Colombia before flowing through Brazil. Mining for Peruvian gold has contaminated some portions of the Madre de Dios River, which is a tributary of the world’s biggest river.
Meanwhile the Murray-Darling goes through just one country. A wealthy, environmentally aware country.
For years, politicians have been trying to co-ordinate some kind of response to the environmental problems faced by the lucrative Murray-Darling. Invasive species, climate change, salinity, land clearing and agricultural run-off are just some of the problems facing the basin.
In recognition of the importance of the Murray-Darling, governments of both colours have set aside large pots of money to deal with the problems. The Guide to the Proposed Murray-Darling Basin Plan, being released tomorrow is the first step to turning some ideas into action. Among the recommendations, it is expected that more water will be taken away from farmers and given to the environment to flush out creeks and rivers desperate for a drink.
Being short of water is not new to Australians. We inhabit the driest continent (bar Antarctica) in the world. The Bureau of Statistics says the basin receives an average annual rainfall of 530,618 billion litres. “Of this, 94 per cent evaporates or transpires, two per cent drains into the ground, and the other four per cent becomes run-off.”
We’ve managed to make a lot of very productive land with very little water. But we need to take this to a whole new level. Not just for Australia’s productivity, but for the world’s.
Water shortages are predicted globally. With a growing population and confusing weather forecast as a result of climate change, water will be hot property in the coming years. Some even predict wars will erupt over water. A briefing note to the OECD in 2005 said “Water scarcity, in combination with low economic development and shortfalls in political governance and other mechanisms in managing tensions peacefully, may therefore lead to instability - threatening lives and livelihoods.”
Australia is in an almost unique position in the world of being able to control the entirety of the Murray-Darling Basin. We are wealthy and we have clever brains who are highly educated. Finances and resources have been allocated to the problem. We have no excuse not to get this right.
Efforts made here to innovate with water use, management and supply could be exported to the world.
As Megan Clarke, CSIRO’s chief executive said on Lateline recently, “We have a major investment in water, and you’re absolutely right, Australia simply must be good at this area of innovation. And there’s still so much to do”
Australia has the brains, the motivation and the right political environment to truly make great strides in water management. We owe it to the world to step up to the challenge.
Sara Phillips has been an environment journalist and editor for more than seven years. Learning the trade on environmental trade publications, she went on to be deputy editor of ‘Cosmos’ magazine and editor of ‘G’, a green lifestyle magazine.
She has won several awards for her work including the 2006 Reuters/IUCN award for excellence in environmental reporting and the 2008 Bell Award for editor of the year.
