[A-List] Australia's epic drought: The situation is grim

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Kathy Marks in Sydney

The Independent & The Independent on Sunday

Independent.co.uk (April 20 2007)


Australia has warned that it will have to switch off the water supply to the
continent's food bowl unless heavy rains break an epic drought - heralding what
could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation.

The Murray-Darling basin in south-eastern Australia yields forty per cent of the
country's agricultural produce. But the two rivers that feed the region are so
pitifully low that there will soon be only enough water for drinking supplies.
Australia is in the grip of its worst drought on record, the victim of changing
weather patterns attributed to global warming and a government that is only just
starting to wake up to the severity of the position.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, a hardened climate-change sceptic, delivered
dire tidings to the nation's farmers yesterday. Unless there is significant
rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the
principal agricultural area. Crops such as rice, cotton and wine grapes will
fail, citrus, olive and almond trees will die, along with livestock.

A ban on irrigation, which would remain in place until May next year, spells
possible ruin for thousands of farmers, already debt-laden and in despair after
six straight years of drought.

Lovers of the Australian landscape often cite the poet Dorothea Mackellar who 
in 1904 penned the classic lines: "I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping
plains". But the land that was Mackellar's muse is now cracked and parched, and
its mighty rivers have shrivelled to sluggish brown streams. With paddocks
reduced to dust bowls, graziers have been forced to sell off sheep and cows at
rock-bottom prices or buy in feed at great expense. Some have already given up,
abandoning pastoral properties that have been in their families for generations.
The rural suicide rate has soared.

Mr Howard acknowledged that the measures are drastic. He said the prolonged 
dry spell was "unprecedentedly dangerous" for farmers, and for the economy as a
whole. Releasing a new report on the state of the Murray and Darling, Mr Howard
said: "It is a grim situation, and there is no point in pretending to Australia
otherwise. We must all hope and pray there is rain."

But prayer may not suffice, and many people are asking why crippling water
shortages in the world's driest inhabited continent are only now being addressed
with any sense of urgency.

The causes of the current drought, which began in 2002 but has been felt most
acutely over the past six months, are complex. But few scientists dispute the
part played by climate change, which is making Australia hotter and drier.

Environmentalists point to the increasing frequency and severity of
drought-causing El Nin~o weather patterns, blamed on global warming. 
They also note Australia's role in poisoning the Earth's atmosphere. 
Australians are among the world's biggest per-capita energy consumers, 
and among the top producers of carbon dioxide emissions. Despite that, 
the country is one of only two industrialised nations - the United States 
being the other - that have refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto protocol. 
The governments argue that to do so would harm their economies.

Until a few months ago, Mr Howard and his ministers pooh-poohed the
climate-change doomsayers. The Prime Minister refused to meet Al Gore 
when he visited Australia to promote his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth {1}.
He was lukewarm about the landmark report by the British economist Sir Nicholas
Stern, which warned that large swaths of Australia's farming land would become
unproductive if global temperatures rose by an average of four degrees {2}.

Faced with criticism from even conservative sections of the media, Mr Howard
realised that he had misread the public mood - grave faux pas in an election
year. Last month's report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
predicted more frequent and intense bushfires, tropical cyclones, and
catastrophic damage to the Great Barrier Reef. The report also said there 
would be up to twenty per cent more droughts by 2030. And it said the annual
flow in the Murray-Darling basin was likely to fall by ten to 25 per cent by
2050. The basin, the size of France and Spain combined, provides 85 per cent 
of the water used nationally for irrigation.

While the government is determined to protect Australia's coal industry, 
the drought is expected to shave one per cent off annual growth this year. 
The farming sector of a country that once "rode the sheep's back" to prosperity
is in desperate straits. With dams and reservoirs drying up, many cities and
towns have been forced to introduce severe water restrictions.

Mr Howard has softened his rhetoric of late, and says that he now broadly
accepts the science behind climate change. He has tried to regain the political
initiative, announcing measures including a plan to take over regulatory control
of the Murray-Darling river system from state governments.

He has declared nuclear power the way forward, and is even considering the
merits of joining an international scheme to "trade" carbon dioxide emissions -
an idea he opposed in the past.

Mr Howard's conservative coalition will face an opposition Labour Party
revitalised by a popular new leader, Kevin Rudd, and offering a climate change
policy that appears to be more credible than his. Ben Fargher, the head of the
National Farmers' Federation, said that if fruit and olive trees died, that
could mean "five to six years of lost production". Food producers also warned of
major food price rises.

Mr Howard acknowledged that an irrigation ban would have a "potentially
devastating" impact. But "this is very much in the lap of the gods", he said.


How UN warned Australia and New Zealand

Excerpts from UN's IPCC report on the threat of global warming to Australia 
and New Zealand:

"As a result of reduced precipitation and increased evaporation, water security
problems are projected to intensify by 2030 in south and east Australia and, in
New Zealand, in Northland and eastern regions".

* "Significant loss of biodiversity is projected to occur by 2020 in some
ecologically rich sites, including the Great Barrier Reef and Queensland's
tropics. Other sites at risk include the Kakadu wetlands ... and the alpine
areas of both countries."

* "Ongoing coastal development and population growth in areas such as Cairns and
south-east Queensland (Australia) and Northland to Bay of Plenty (New Zealand)
are projected to exacerbate risks from sea-level rise and increases in the
severity and frequency of storms and coastal flooding by 2050".

* "Production from agriculture and forestry by 2030 is projected to decline over
much of southern and eastern Australia, and over parts of eastern New Zealand,
due to increases in droughts and fires".

* "The region has substantial adaptive capacity due to well-developed 
economies and scientific and technical capabilities, but there are considerable
constraints to implementation ... Natural systems have limited adaptive capacity".


Notes:

{1} http://www.powells.com/s?kw=an+inconvenient+truth&x=0&y=0

{2} http://www.powells.com/biblio/72-9780521700801-0


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/australasia/article2465960.ece


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