I'm really interested in how people are experiencing
and adapting to climate change.
it's no longer something hypothetical. It's no longer something that we can worry about in the future.
It's happening right now, and there's nowhere where that's more true than Australia.
The warming world will mean there is less water to go around and that is going to put huge stress
on the mechanisms by which water is allocated and shared.
I traveled earlier this year to the Murray-Darling region of Australia, which is the country’s agricultural heartland.
It is named for two of Australia’s most important rivers, the Murray and the Darling
which converge at the border of New South Wales and Victoria.
Together, they and their tributaries are a critical source of fresh water.
Three million people drink it every day, while another 40 million, rely on it for food.
Although it’s remote from glittering coastal cities like Sydney and Melbourne, the Murray-Darling has long been
at the vanguard of Australia’s economy.
Australia's an arid continent and has always been dry. There have always been alternating cycles of
drought and flood in this part of the country as elsewhere. But what is changing now is, of course, the climate.
The dry periods are getting drier. The rain is apparently getting farther and farther apart.
And that creates huge challenges for the environment.Huge challenges for agriculture
and huge challenges just for people living here.
One of those affected is Gus Whyte, a farmer who runs livestock, mostly sheep, on 31,000 hectares of land.
He drove me across his farm and gave me an idea of how his life has been affected.
There’s just not a drop of water in that landscape
Nah, nah, it’s just exceptionally dry.
There’s not many people in this part of the world that aren’t dependent on
either the Murray or Darling rivers or both.
There's a completely dry lake bed that would have been water some years ago.
And a lot of people around here would like it to be water again.
But unless there is serious rain and changes in the way that this watershed are managed,
that's just not going to happen.
A couple of hours’ drive from Gus’s farm, I met another local who’s been suffering the consequences
of water shortages, and has become an advocate for changing how water is managed: Rob McBride.
He’s the owner of Tolarno Station, a vast ranch on the banks of the darling
that dates to the early years of European settlement.
my familys been here about 80 years, we’ve been farming in Australia for about 167.
The river is everything it always has been from the Barkindji down to us
that we all know how important that is. And with the destruction that's happened on our river system,
I’ve never seen it look like this. It’s a desert.
80% of our population lives in three cities. They have no idea what's going on here.
and we have real problems
The problems McBride is referring to go beyond the effects of climate change on the rivers.
He believes the immediate cause of the crisis in the Murray-Darling is more specific:
unsustainable water use by large, well-funded agribusiness groups,
who he says are taxing an already-stressed system to the point of no return.
One of the fastest-growing users of water in recent years have been almond farms.
Select Harvests’ almond orchard at Bunargool, on the Murray River, is one of the larger ones.
The irrigation system at Bunargool is outfitted with industrial pumps that can each pull
330 liters of water per second from the Murray River. They run for up to 18 hours a day.
That leaves a lot less for others reliant on water in the area.
Almond farms are able to use this much water thanks to Australia’s water-trading system,
which is designed to allocate water to the highest economic return.
Companies and farmers can buy the rights to pump specific amounts of water,
with the prices set by the market. Because almond farms are generally quite profitable, they can afford it.
Select Harvests says it’s very efficient with the water it uses. But there’s no getting around the fact
that almonds require a lot of water to grow. One study of growing conditions in California
estimated that it takes more than six liters per almond.
And the company plans to scale up production.
I asked Select Harvests’ managing director whether he thinks the almond industry can keep growing as water
becomes more difficult to obtain. He prefers to think of the question in a different way.
Some people would say, are you using less water or more water? That’s the wrong question.
The question is are you producing more per megalitre and we are
I pressed him further on the continued effects of climate change on the industry. He said:
We're wonderful beasts. We'll figure ways out of this stuff
A big part of Australia’s national myth is built on overcoming nature,
and there’s sometimes a reluctance to recognize that the environment will eventually reach its limits.
This sentiment goes further than agribusiness executives.
This is coal. don't be afraid, don't be scared
Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, has downplayed the effects of climate change
notably during the bushfires that began ravaging the country in late 2019.
The Prime minister has declared any link between Australia’s climate change policies
and the current bush fires doesn’t stand up to reason.
The suggestion that any way shape or form that Australia is accountable for 1.3%
of the world's emissions. That the individual actions of Australia are impacting directly on specific fire events
whether it’s here or anywhere else in the world. That doesn’t bear up to credible scientific evidence either.
So water is the commodity at the end of the day
The aquifer was at 20 meters ten years ago. Now it’s at 200 meters.
with that gone, there’s nothing left for anything
You’re looking at 40% less water coming down the Darling river I reckon in the next 20 years,
and the government’s talking about putting dams in right at the top
I believed that we had people who respected their river and their country, and I was badly mistaken
The river needs to return to sustainable irrigators throughout the Murray Darling basin
Environmentalists believe the people of the Murray-Darling need to have a wide-ranging discussion about
what the environment can support.
Whether the trajectory will change, I don’t know. That’s in large part a political question.
There is a general election in Australia in a couple of years.
If there’s a change in government that could lead to a change in the parameters of management
of the river system. But I think for now, things are probably going to continue as they have.
While it is in many ways, a uniquely Australian story. It’s also coming to a cinema near you.
More and more places in the world are going to be water stressed as the planet heats up
and so there are certainly lessons, positive and negative, to be drawn from the Australian experience.