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July 13, 2008
When Professor Ross Garnaut launched his draft climate change report he was sketching the River Murray's future . The numbers in the Garnaut review-commissioned basin study found that if nothing is done about global warming, irrigated farming there will face a 92% decline by 2100.
Matt Davidson
This scenario fits with the work of scientists at the South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative. This body has recently become more certain that climate change is the culprit behind the stubborn band of high pressure that has hovered for a decade over the basin's southern part — and Melbourne — making the natural drought hotter and drier.
The fact that the opening the sea barrages to Lake Albert and Lake Alexandrina is now under consideration illustrates the depth of the crisis engulfing the Murray's lower reaches that also threatens the Coorong wetlands at the river mouth.
Of course, that means the end of farming communities, reliant on the lakes water for irrigation, stock and domestic use for generations. There are no guarantees that the lakes would return to freshwater in a warmed up world with reduced flows in the Basin and a period of drying across the Murray-Darling basin.
The Murray-Darling Basin Commission has put together options to save the lower lakes but these have not been made public. Calls by green groups for an emergency meeting to consider these secret proposals have fallen on deaf ears. So the status quo remains---more irrigation infrastructure is to be built. The assumption is that if we build it - it will rain.
As Melissa Fyfe in The Age sums up the current situation when she says:
Climate change and drought have exposed the basin's fundamental problem: overallocation. Irrigators have taken too much water and the pool of available water is shrinking. A major resetting of the system is needed. We know the environmental cost is already high. But the human cost is also, right now, high — and will continue to be.Governments privately acknowledge the need for "structural adjustment" — this is public service speak that means many farmers will be forced to leave the land or stop irrigated farming and switch to something else. Hard-nosed economists say well, bad luck, you are unsustainable.
The Victorian Government knows this scenario, so it is embarking on a $1 billion Foodbowl Modernisation irrigation infrastructure project in northern Victoria. Water savings, it is argued, will come from increased infrastructure investment in pipes, line channels, new meters, and an automated system. But how does more irrigated agriculture square with the realities of less rain, the drying out of the basin, structural adjustment, and the buying back of over-allocated water licences?
It doesn't. The farmers with their modernised irrigation systems will eventually sell up and walk off the degraded land. Many want to sell now but the cap on trade prevents them from doing so. Fyre poses the right questions:
So we've got John with his pipes on the one side, Penny with her cash on the other, and a disconnect in between. Where's the deep thinking on how to really cushion the social blows of these massive changes? Where are the ideas to make these regional communities robust and sustainable economies with healthy environments?
The new ideas aren't coming from state governments. They are so beholden to the past and irrigated agriculture that they are incapable of speaking openly and honestly about the future of the basin. So they hide behind closed doors, keep the information hidden away in the bureaucracy and rave on about CoAG.
Update: July 14
An estimated 3000 people turned out for a rally at Goolwa near the Murray's mouth yesterday, where low water levels have almost crippled tourism. Councils and communities around the lower lakes are demanding release of water held in Menindee Lakes in NSW to top up Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert. That option is deemed better than the seawater option as it allows their irrigation to continue.
Will NSW come the party? The history of the basin suggests that it is highly unlikely. Self-interest rules in basin politics, despite the states having made a huge mess out of basin management by over-allocating water licences. Yet doing nothing is not an option. as it would lead to the total destruction of the lower lakes.
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I attended the rally in Goolwa. People are very angry at the inaction of the politicians. All they do is spin to cover their inaction. Co-operative federalism is a a joke on this issue.
In his op-ed in The Australian Stephen Beare, a former a consultant to the Murray-Darling Basin Commission,says:
That just about sums it up.