Australia's epic drought: The situation is grim

By Kathy Marks in Sydney

Published: 20 April 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 40 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 Niño 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. 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.

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 20 per cent more droughts by 2030. And it said the annual flow in the Murray-Darling basin was likely to fall by 10-25 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 1 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."

Story from

Polluted, drought-stricken China eyes sea water

Wed Jun 13, 11:15 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - China, where hundreds of millions lack regular access to drinking water due to drought and pollution, plans to build a huge sea water desalination plant south of Shanghai, state media said on Wednesday.

Adding to widespread drought, factories have ignored pollution hazards and dumped toxic industrial waste into rivers and lakes in China, home to one-fifth of the world's population but only 7 percent of its water resources.

In late May and early June, the country's third-largest lake, Lake Taihu in the eastern province of Jiangsu, was struck by a foul-smelling canopy of algae. It made tap water undrinkable for more than 2.3 million residents of the city of Wuxi and prompted a run on bottled water.

The desalination plant, to be built in the neighboring province of Zhejiang, awaits final approval from the National Development and Reform Commission.

It would be the country's biggest in terms of processing capacity. The largest by size is currently under construction in the northern city of Tianjin, which also lacks adequate supplies of drinking water.

China's Ministry of Water Resources added that it would no longer sign off on building projects on marginal lands, such as steep slopes or other areas which often suffer landslides.

Pollution also affects China's fish stocks, according to a report from the Ministry of Agriculture and State Environmental Protection Agency, though it said the situation last year was generally stable.

Cadmium, copper and lead pollution all affect stocks in the seas around China, while nitrates and phosphates pollute inland waterways, it said in the report carried on the agriculture ministry's Web site (www.agri.gov.cn).

It said last year there were 1,463 pollution "incidents" affecting Chinese fisheries which cost the industry a total of 3.64 billion yuan ($477.3 million).

China is also investing billions in a project to transfer water from its lush south, currently suffering devastating floods, to the arid north.

Story From

Melting glaciers hit Tajik lives

By: Nick Paton Walsh

We report from Tajikistan, where temperatures have risen and glaciers are melting - causing floods, pollution, disease and landslides.

Melting glaciers are changing the way people live.

11,000 feet up, climate change is stripping the landscape bare in the Zerafshan Valley in the north of Tajikistan.

It's one of the remotest places on earth. But it's at the heart of a problem facing the leaders of the G8 as they meet. In May ten years ago, the snow lay thick here. But now the spring melt has a permanent effect.

"I'm saddened as there's no water and less ice than there used to be. I worry the lands won't have enough water to grow grass for the goats." - Abdulkahar Kaharov, local shepherd

And as the snowfall lessens, these glaciers are also seeing historic change, retreating by 20 metres a year.

"I'm saddened as there's no water and less ice than there used to be. I worry the lands won't have enough water to grow grass for the goats."
<cite>- Abdulkahar Kaharov, local shepherd</cite>

Tajik glaciers provide most of the water from this region. At this time of year they're melting but at the same time they're also receding and officials and aid workers are worried this will drastically reduce the amount of water that's available to this country and its neighbours.

"These mountains provide water for the entire Central Asia with water so anyting that happens here will have an effect on the lives of people on the economies of countries for the coming years. We see that these glaciers are receding and we interpret that as an effect of climate change." - Karl Nilsson, UNDP spokesman

In just another decade's time, shrinking glaciers could cause water shortages in this village downstream. But for now there's plenty of water. Too much in fact, in some places in the country's south - causing landslides and flash flooding.

""These mountains provide water for the entire Central Asia with water so anyting that happens here will have an effect on the lives of people on the economies of countries for the coming years. "
<cite>- Karl Nilsson, UN Development spokesman</cite>

Tajikistan is Central Asia's poorest country - rugged in the north, but arid and flat to the south. Here cattle churn up what's left of a riverbed. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, the country's infrastructure's been struggling to cope. And that was before the temperature rose by up to one and a half degrees in just ten years.

A pipe installed by Oxfam was a lifeline, a local engineer tells me - feeding spring water to three thousand people. But then a landslide shattered it.

And without it, the irrigation ditches are this village's only source of water. Local fathers speak of their anger - drinking dirt in a land seen as the water basin of Central Asia.

Said says his six -year-old son Shamsod, has had TB in his bones for two years. They blame the infection on cows feeding in the water. Medically, that's unlikely.

But the water here is both more scarce and dirtier than it used to be. And dirty water does damage the immune system. TB's been rising across the country. One of many diseases that a more hostile climate helps spread.

"It's not right. I'm sure you wouldn't even clean your hands with this water, but we drink it."
<cite>- Khatika Latifova</cite>

The Soviets called this the Valley of Death. But now its diseased past is back. The water muddying, bringing dysentery and diarrhoea, which even the local doctor's children have caught.

The temperature is rising by 2 degrees each year. It's destructive and effects people too. Disease and stomach complaints will rise in this area.

Now the pipe is broken and the tap outside Khatika Latifova's house is dry, she's drinking from the channel again. Making tea is quite a chore in this village of 800. She lets the water settle, then spends half an hour boiling it. Even that didn't stop her son catching dysentery

"The water smells of every terrible thing possible. At midday, it smells of cow dung because the farm animals pass over it all day.. It's thick, dirty, muddy.

"It's not right. I'm sure you wouldn't even clean your hands with this water, but we drink it." - Khatika Latifova

She too has had TB and it's left her weak. And now her 22 year old son has caught it. She says her family feels constantly sick, but just can't afford to leave.

But less water means migration, just over an hour away in the Timur Malik area. As the climate's got hotter, people are moving from areas prone to landslides and floods, mostly to the capital.

We went to see one of three taps that comes on for two hours in the evening meaning this village has to go through the punishing heat of the day without a water source. It's one of the key reasons people for leaving. Landslides flash flooding and this serious water shortage meant that across Tajikistan people are forced to leave the villages they grew up in.

"I'm leaving as I have 9 sons, one daughter but only one house. And because of the lack of water. My living conditions here are very bad. There's no electricity and my vegetable garden's dry."
<cite>Shosodamo Yusupova</cite>

Shosodamo Yusupova is one such person leaving - the state will give her land in another area. But she'll have to build her new home herself.

"I'm leaving as I have 9 sons, one daughter but only one house. And because of the lack of water. My living conditions here are very bad. There's no electricity and my vegetable garden's dry." - Shosodamo Yusupova

As we talk to her, two officials arrive to collect a water tax - she pays about 50 pence. But water's costly here. And it's perhaps cheaper for the state to move people to it, than bring it to them.

As she registers to migrate, a local official explains why nearly a thousand people are leaving next month.

"It's water," she says. "That's first and foremost. It's fast becoming a flashpoint for the region.

This river flows into neighbouring Uzbekistan. Tajikistan wants to damn it, and generate electricity. So Uzbekistan's threatened to cut off gas supplies in return."

Water's big money. It grows cotton, which makes both countries millions. Future G8 meetings could have to address wars being fought over it.

But for now, its growing lack condemns Tajiks to toil on a barren, unhealthy land.

Story from Channel 4 News