¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ

IRRIGATORS are prepared to give up significant amounts of water to protect
river systems, according to a recent survey. It also found that communities in
two major Australian catchments view social justice as more important than
maximising farm income.

Water has always been a big issue in Australia. Of all the inhabited
continents, Australia has the lowest average rainfall and the most irregular. So
it comes as no surprise that water users support recent reforms which aim to
make better use of limited supplies. These changes have a strong economic focus,
with an explicit aim of using the water to maximise farm income.

The surprising outcome of the study, however, is that irrigators are not so
desperate to make more money they would compromise river health. In fact, their
views seem more enlightened than the administrators making the reforms. Those
using water for commercial cultivation would support significant cuts to their
allocations to prevent destruction of habitat.

The findings are contained in a report prepared by John Tisdell of Griffith
University for the Catchment Hydrology Cooperative Research Centre. (It is
available on the Web at http://www.ens.gu.edu.au/johnt/crcch/crcch.htm)
Tisdell’s study is based on surveys of thousands of water users and members of
the community in two very different catchment areas, the Fitzroy in central
Queensland and the Goulburn-Broken in Victoria.

The results were clear. Given four alternative scenarios for water
management, the most popular option was to reduce water use by 30 per cent to
ensure any degradation of habitat is reversible. And the second choice was to
cut use by 40 per cent to ensure no degradation at all. The least popular option
was to maintain water use at the cost of irreversible damage.

This outcome should be a wake-up call to regulators, who are basing their
reforms on increasing economic production, introducing full-cost pricing, and
cutting out public subsidy of water users. In both catchments, more people
oppose full-cost pricing than support the idea. That’s probably not
surprising—those who enjoy public subsidy are usually opposed to its
removal.

I was more worried by the response to a question about involvement in the
reform process. Fewer than 20 per cent say they are well informed or actively
involved in the process. About 20 per cent say they are involved but largely
ignored, while more than 60 per cent say they are poorly informed. That is
hardly a recipe for a durable new water allocation policy.

THE likely effects of global climate change on agriculture are serious and
deserve urgent attention, a conference in Perth was told earlier this month.
Speaking at Sustainability 2001, Kevin Hennessy of CSIRO Atmospheric
Research drew on the recently released Third Assessment Report by the
Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change
(¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ, 27 January, p 5).

The IPCC is now predicting greater increases in temperature and larger
changes to rainfall patterns than in previous forecasts. CSIRO modelling shows
that there will be a bigger impact on some parts of Australia than others.
Tasmania is likely to warm by about the global average, for example, while the
inland areas of the continent will become much hotter, especially the northern
parts of Western Australia.

But the big problem is rainfall and consequent water availability. Nine
different models were used to predict the effects of global warming on rainfall.
All showed a large decrease in total rainfall over southern
Australia—especially the southern corner of WA—as well as a serious
reduction in spring rainfall in the eastern states. With the continent becoming
up to 20 per cent drier, and higher temperatures leading to greater evaporation,
there are real problems for agriculture. The water allocation issues discussed
above will become much more urgent.

A hotter and drier Australia will also be more vulnerable to bushfires. And
there are very serious implications for biological diversity. The predicted
temperature rise of 2 °C by 2100, for example, would eliminate 61 dryandra
species, 27 acacia species as well as many frogs and birds from the southwest
corner of WA. It looks to be a heavy price to pay for failing to curb emissions
of greenhouse gases. Hennessy’s presentation gave the conference a real impetus
to discuss issues such as urban transport, the main reason for the rapid growth
in Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions.