A pioneering Australian scheme to improve the management of water in the world’s driest inhabited continent is facing its first real test as an intensifying El Nino threatens crops and builds tensions between farmers and environmentalists.
The three-year old management plan for the Murray-Darling Basin, an area twice the size of Spain and home to 40 percent of Australia’s agricultural output, has been lauded internationally and suggested as a guide for drought-hit California.
Forged in the wake of a ruinous 14-year drought, the scheme set up a market-based water trading system, improved cooperation across state borders and focused on efficient water usage.
“All of these lessons are appropriate to the US,” said water policy expert David Feldman of the University of California, Irvine, where the state is suffering from a four-year dry spell that has threatened agriculture and helped fan severe wildfires this summer.
Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin encompasses two major river systems in Australia’s southeast, but years of siphoning off water to irrigate crops has devastated waterways, creating dried-out wetlands and acidic soils, toxic algal blooms that threaten animal and human health, and high levels of salinity.
A 2012 water management plan instituted a raft of water-saving measures, and set up a market-based system where farmers who have been allocated water rights under decades-old systems can trade their entitlements.
Under the scheme, the government buys water to keep the river healthy, farmers can buy water to irrigate crops in lean years or during the hot summer season and investors are also welcome.
However, changes to the Australian plan amid a resurgent El Nino weather pattern have worried environmentalists, who say its reputation and credibility are now at risk.
The plan initially met little resistance in rural areas, but dry weather this year has depleted some dams that store river water, forcing farmers to accept big cuts in their water entitlements.
The loss is particularly hard for summer crops that rely heavily on irrigation like cotton, rice and sorghum.
While the dry weather is hastening a shift from water-intensive crops like cotton and rice, it has also sparked calls for changes to the management plan as farmers say too much water is being used for the environment.
While farmers can buy water on market, prices have jumped sharply to more than A$200 (US$145) per megaliter in some regions — well in excess of viable limits for many, who argue that having to compete with the government has driven up prices.
Australian lawmakers last week nearly halved the amount of water the government can buy from local farmers, instead giving farmers subsidies to save water that would then be available for sale.
Environmentalists and some academics question the changes, which the Australian Conservation Foundation says will cost up to five times the market rate of buying water, while there is also a physical limit on how much can be saved.
This week, the government transferred management of Australia’s water resources from the Department of the Environment to the Department of Agriculture, a move long sought by rural bodies.
Feldman said legal and political differences would make it difficult to implement parts of the Australian system in the US.
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