Water Book

  1. Overview
  2. Foreword
  3. Contents, Acknowledgements
  4. Introduction
  5. Chapter 1: Current water availability and use
  6. Chapter 2: Water values
  7. Chapter 3: Water and climate
  8. Chapter 4: Groundwater
  9. Chapter 5: Water quality
  10. Chapter 6: Urban water sustainability
  11. Chapter 7: Future urban water supplies
  12. Chapter 8: Irrigation
  13. Chapter 9: Water for the environment
  14. Chapter 10: Water in mining and industry
  15. Chapter 11: Conclusions
  16. Endnotes, Index

Introduction

Page 4 of 16

Monoman Creek, Chowilla Floodplain showing dying red gums and a blue green alga bloom.

By Bill Young and Ian Prosser

Around the world, access to water has always been a key determinant of how and where human populations have flourished. Australia is no different.

Overview

Water is essential to our economy and our way of life and its use has continued to increase due to population growth and expansion of agriculture and other industries. This increase in water use – significantly underpinned by investment in major water infrastructure – has helped fuel Australia’s economic growth, but at an environmental cost.

Australia faces challenges of a growing and urbanising population, of growing demand for water for food and fibre production, and of environmental sustainability, particularly in the face of climate change.

In the face of increasing demand and dwindling supply in some regions. Australia has the difficult task of balancing the use of water for direct economic benefits against indirect benefits such as environmental water use of water for conservation and the provision of ecosystems services.

In order to secure water for future generations, Australian governments, industries, and communities will want to understand current and future water availability and explore ways of meeting the demands on these water supplies.

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Interview with Ian Prosser

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Transcript

Overall Australians have enough water resources to meet their needs.  In fact when you compare Australia with the rest of the world, whilst Australia is the driest continent on earth, it’s also by far the most sparsely populated country on earth, so that we actually only use about 6 per cent of our total available water resources.  That’s not to say by any means that there are no problems with water resources in Australia, the difficulties come in the year to year variation, we really are a land of droughts and of flooding rains, so there are years when there are acute water shortages, and of course all of our... most of our population and our water use is in the south-east corner of the country, and in those areas we fully used our water resources, and a lot of the unused water resources are elsewhere.

A lot of the conflicts over water in Australia relate to very different values that people have on... have for water, so water is a highly treasured resource in Australia, it’s essential for life, we actually have very good quality and very reliable drinking water supplies, but water is also required to support our natural environments, there’s a lot of recreation around Australian waterways, around estuaries, lakes, and rivers.  There’s also Australia has very good international standard water ecosystems which are also very valuable to us, and of course we need to, being a drier continent, we need water for irrigation.  By far the most productive agriculture in Australia is irrigated agriculture, and it’s often a conflict between different people’s values for water, what different uses people want to put the water, that create these conflicts.

The demands on our water resources are growing, and at the same time, particularly in southern Australia, the future availability of water may reduce through climate change, and so as these demands grow, as these conflicts around water only get more acute, we really need to have smarter ways of managing water, reducing the conflicts, providing water to meet all needs for the resource, forecasting future water availability, allocating it to those who need it most at the most acute times.

So there’s considerable opportunity for innovation in water resources, in getting better efficiency, both for water for irrigation, more efficient city watering, and more efficient use of water for the environment.

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