Issue Number 48 - March 2003

2003 International Year of FreshWater

Water has been identified by the Social Action Office and SAO partners as one of the strategic priorities for 2003. 2003 is the International Year of FreshWater (IYFW) and together with other water related issues confronting our planet it was obvious that this be a priority.

The need for a sustainable management of water

The International Year of FreshWater was officially launched at a ceremony in New York in December. The aim of the year is to raise awareness of the importance of protecting and managing freshwater. Water availability in quantity and quality will be a growing concern in many countries and access to water will increasingly be a source of conflicts in the future.

At the same time, Australia is experiencing one of the most severe droughts of its history, with severe impacts on farmers and ecosystems. Actually, some areas of the country, especially in central Queensland, have received the lowest rainfall on record. Of course, it has been said that this was an exceptional year. But clearly, new approaches in water management must be found if we want to optimise the allocation of that invaluable resource between all the uses and users. Major cross-border issues regarding water have to be further addressed at a national level, particularly the water allocation of the Murray-Darling Rivers.

The answer to water management is not only technical, as in finding new irrigation methods and more appropriate farming systems or more efficient washing machines. Moving towards a more sustainable management of water resources implies reforms at an institutional or policy level. For some time now, water reform has been on the agenda. The Council of Australian Governments’ (COAG) Water Reform Framework is an attempt to coordinate action at a national level and to design a national policy for the sustainable use of water resources. This goes from water pricing to the allocation of water property rights to research into new technologies and integrated catchment management. At the moment, the House of Representatives is conducting an “Inquiry into future water supplies for Australia’s rural industries and communities”. The Committee in charge of the inquiry was recently in Brisbane, listening to farmers’ associations, catchment associations, water boards and other groups. Pierre attended the two hearings.

In light of this, the rationale behind the SAO’s choice of freshwater as a strategic priority is quite obvious. Water management is a huge matter interweaving complex social and environmental issues. As a resource, it can consist in surface water (rivers and lakes) or groundwater; the Artesian Basin is a specific form of groundwater. The exploitation or the contamination of each one of these forms of water comes with their own characteristics. Because of the scarcity of the resource there is competition between different users: between regions (like in the case of the Murray-Darling system), between agricultural, industrial or domestic uses, between different industrial or agricultural uses (e.g. cotton, dairy farming, or fruit, etc.), between corporate and small users and so on.

Freshwater is also a living environment for plant and animal communities in rivers, lakes and wetlands. So there is competition too between humans and nature. The COAG water framework explicitly mentions the need for legitimate allocations of water for the environment. The ongoing diversion of water for human needs, but also the increasing regulation of stream flows, have had adverse effects on river ecosystems and wetlands. And we must underline here the deep connections between water flows and salinity or land clearing.

So, what about the Social Action Office?

The SAO is in the process of refining its focus on water. A preliminary research is underway and will be done as much as possible in networking with groups working in the same direction. The expertise and support of SAO Partners in furthering this refinement is sought. If you are interested, please make contact with SAO regarding this: sao.admin@sao.clriq.org.au or phone (07) 3891 5866.