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Slaking profit’s thirst
Maude Barlow, The Age
As water becomes rarer, it is being treated as a costly commodity by governments.
Late last year, I had the great privilege of giving a presentation at the International Landcare Conference on the global water crisis. What I observed as well as what I have researched about Australia’s water crisis disturbed me deeply and led me to write these words of warning.
With a few exceptions, your politicians are not dealing honestly with you about the water crisis looming on your horizon. The use of the word “drought” leads people to believe that this is a cyclical situation and will end. That is not my reading. Annual rainfall is declining; salinity and desertification are spreading rapidly; rivers are being drained at an unsustainable rate; aquifers are way over-pumped – groundwater extraction skyrocketed a whopping 90 per cent in the 1990s – as well as being contaminated from the 80,000 toxic dump sites under the major cities; and many surface management areas now exceed sustainable limits. Ask any farmer: Australia is running out of water.
Yet, at the very moment that massive conservation plans must be implemented and the need for public oversight of diminishing water supplies has never been greater, your governments are promoting or planning at least six ways in which your water is being wasted, exported and privatised for corporate profit.
First, obsessed with the ideology of unlimited growth, politicians refuse to question the massive export of “virtual” water from water-intensive agricultural industries such as beef (almost two-thirds of which is exported), dairy and cotton. It is simply unsustainable for the driest continent on earth to be a net exporter of virtual water – about 4000 million megalitres a year – when this water is so desperately needed at home. Not surprisingly, these water exports benefit the big agribusiness companies while bleeding water (and livelihoods) from smaller farmers growing for the domestic market.
Instead of rethinking this dangerous and short-sighted policy, your Federal Government is negotiating a free trade agreement with China which, by the way, has destroyed its own water resources in its drive for economic dominance.
Second, the big European water companies are running water and wastewater systems in many of your cities, making huge profits from your scarce water resources. Residents of Sydney and Adelaide don’t need to be reminded of the problems they have experienced with Thames Water, Vivendi and Suez, but you need to know that these companies have provoked a huge reaction all over the world for their outrageous water rates, poor service and environmental transgressions.
(19 Jan 2007)
Australia ponders climate future
Phil Mercer, BBC News
Parts of Australia are in the grip of the worst drought in memory.
Rainfall in many eastern and southern regions has been at near record lows. On top of that, the weather has been exceptionally warm.
The parched conditions have sparked an emotional debate about global warming.
Conservationists insist the “big dry” is almost certainly the result of climate change and warn that Australia is on the brink of environmental disaster.
(24 Jan 2007)
Coral study suggests more severe Australian droughts
ABC Rural
Studies of coral reefs have led Australian scientists to forecast Australia will have longer and more severe droughts in future.
Researchers from Australia and Britain say studies of coral drilled from Indonesian reefs have revealed climate information thousands of years old.
Report author Neroli Abram says the analysis suggests strong Asian monsoons and drier winds across the Indian Ocean will cause Australia to be drier.
“We expect that with global warming that the Asian monsoon is going to strengthen and the implication of our findings is that the consequences of this monsoon strengthening are going to be more widespread than what has previously been thought and are going to have implications for Indonesia and Australia.”
(19 Jan 2007)
Woolworths National Drought Action Day: on the right track, but may lack sustainable commitment
Andi Hazelwood, Relocalize.net
In response to what has been called Australia’s worst drought in a thousand years,1 on Tuesday January 23rd Woolworths will donate its entire supermarkets profits from all Australian Woolworths & Safeway supermarkets to the Country Women’s Association to help farming families with household bills, and for research into sustainable farming practices.2 A commendable action, to be sure: this is Australia’s sixth consecutive year of drought. Statistics show that the country’s most important river system, within the Murray-Darling Basin, could run out of water within months.3 Crop losses have resulted in soaring wheat prices and even recession in some rural areas.4 Every four days an Australian farmer takes his own life.5 Woolworths’ donation will make an immediate difference in the lives of many farmers and their families. But if farmers don’t move to sustainable farming methods for the long term, these social, economic and environmental conditions will continue. I wanted to know more about Woolworths “ongoing commitment to sustainable agricultural development.”6
…Sustainable agriculture practices such as Landcare farming, Permaculture, Yeoman’s keyline design, biodynamics and organics, if adpoted on a broad scale, can ameliorate the effects of drought and can significantly reduce Australia’s emissions.
(17 Jan 2007)
Alan Matheson over at On Line Opinion takes an even more skeptical approach. Add to Andi’s list of agricultural solutions Natural Sequence Farming. Permaculture might be thought of a framework for encompassing this and other approaches, although NSF has rebranded some core permaculture practices for a more conservative farming audience while introducing many new insights. NSF and Permaculture sometimes find themselves in opposition to the landcare movement. The latter favours native revegetation efforts within farm waterways, while the former two often emphasise the restorative, ecological values of ‘weeds’. -AF
Drought drag on Australian growth
BBC News
The Australian government has reduced its economic growth forecast after the worst drought in a century caused a 20% drop in farm output.
(20 Jan 2007)
More…
Australian houses are cracking up due to drying soil in the buildings’ foundations. Tens of thousands of poisonous snakes are entering suburbia in search of moisture. Outback drought broken by extreme flooding.
