As a major water conference held in Albury, NSW, draws to a close, questions are being asked about the length of time it is taking for national water reforms to come to fruition.
“Water reform has never been higher on the Australian consciousness,” said commissioner with the National Water Commission, Prof Peter Cullen who is also a member of the Wentworth Group of concerned scientists. “We have been on this water reform journey since 1994, but unfortunately, while we can agree as to what we should do, we do not seem to be able to actually do the things that need to be done.”
(Prof Cullen is delivering the closing address tomorrow afternoon at the week-long 5th Australian Stream Management Conference which is being hosted by Charles Sturt University’s Institute for Land, Water and Society.)
“The degradations of many of our rivers has been obvious since last century and in all the water reform agreements since CoAG in 1994 there have been repeated commitments to correcting over allocated systems,” said Prof Cullen. “However while water plans have secured water entitlements for irrigators, in reality little real progress has been made in restoring over allocated systems. Even the well-funded Living Murray program has only been able to achieve about half its target.”
In summarising the outcomes of the conference, the Institute’s director Prof Allan Curtis said: “We are looking for leadership from Governments to deliver the reforms they promised, including through the National Plan for Water Security. At present it seems our politicians are more interested in playing brinkmanship [going to the edge to make things happen] than working together to meet the serious challenges raised at our conference.”
Some of the main points that Prof Cullen will make in his address include:
- While the National Water Initiative has stated that water plans need to clarify sustainable levels of extraction which puts the environmental needs of the river first, the problem now for science and water managers is to define just what environmentally-sustainable levels of extraction mean.
- The challenge of defining over allocation with marked differences in the methods used by various States to make these assessments.
- The fact that Victoria and Tasmania are the only two States that have ongoing systematic efforts to measure river health.
- That the aim of river management in 21st Century is to retain, or where necessary, restore the resilience of river systems to cope with changes such as those caused by climate change, the occasional invasion of exotic plants and animals, and the pressures our society imposes through extraction of water, changing of flow regimes and the addition of pollutants.
The conference was attended by more than 270 people including many practitioners involved in river and stream management.
“It has provided an excellent opportunity for the different practitioners to be exposed to the cutting edge science around climate change and assessment of the ecological health of our rivers,” said Prof Curtis. “Despite the changes we are all facing there has been remarkable optimism especially when we have seen examples of innovative approaches such as the use of Market Based Instrument, the temporary sale of water, or large investments.”
Prof Cullen’s address at 2.40 pm at the Albury Performing Arts Centre, Swift St., Albury is open to the general public at no charge.
Social
Explore the world of social