When the River Murray runs backwards – as it did recently – and its
mouth closes over, as it is threatening to do, it’s a sign that
something is gravely wrong.
We don’t just see the problem in closure of the Murray Mouth, but
also in declining water quality, the rising levels of salinity, the dying
forests and floodplains, the loss of fish, birdlife and other aquatic
animals and plants, the silence of the bush. Old Man Murray is telling us
something – and it’s high time we started to listen.
The difficulty is that many of the changes that turn a healthy river
into a dying river are imperceptible. They take place over such long spans
of time that few people notice them, or recall clearly the way things used
to be.
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Scientific study of Australia’s rivers and estuaries suggests they
can absorb a lot of punishment, degrading slowly until quite suddenly,
they reach a point of no-return and the system dies or changes completely
for the worse. The challenge is how to awake ourselves to it, in time to
prevent a collapse.
We have seen it in the Gippsland lakes, where more and more water was
extracted for Melbourne, for the LaTrobe valley and for farming. The loss
of flushing with fresh water led, imperceptibly, to the collapse of a
healthy brackish water system filled with fish and seagrasses.
It became a turbid, nutrient-polluted, saline system dominated by
algae. The salt wedge pushing up from the sea against the weakened flow
has largely destroyed the natural system. Nutrients from erosion, sewage
and from farming, no longer flushed to sea, have nourished the algae.
It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reverse such a
process. The only real option is to restore some of the Lakes’ natural
flow regime, to put back part of the fresh water. And that requires a
complicated discussion and decisions about all the other things we use and
value the water for – drinking, power, irrigation, manufacturing. It’s
a question of values.
As Australians, we love our rivers, our estuaries, lakes and
coastlines. None of us wants to lose them or ruin them.
The irony is that’s exactly what we are doing. In some cases we’re
simply unaware of the process, because its signs so hard to read until the
crisis breaks.
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The threat to our landscape is by no means confined to its waterways.
Many people who visit the bush say they come back refreshed because of its
silence and peacefulness.
There are two kinds of silence however: natural quiet, and the silence
of the tomb. If you visit parts of Australia where the bush is still
intact, you will find it is far from silent. Birds, insects and small
scurrying marsupials make a constant chorus of sound, which can be quite
deafening. That is the bush our forebears went into and enjoyed.
The silence of the bush is like an algal bloom in a great river. They
are both signs that the complex web of life that used to prevail has
broken, and only fragments of it remain. Where once there were hundreds of
species, only a few hang on in the simplified ecosystem. The rest are
gone, moved away, locally extinct and sometimes, totally extinct.
Of the 30 species of native fish in the Murray-Darling system, 16 are
now threatened and one, the trout-cod, is rated as critically endangered.
Like the coal-miner’s canary, the fish are telling us the water is no
longer healthy enough for them to live in.
We also have a $10 billion irrigation industry that depends on drawing
water from the rivers of the Murray-Darling system. In turn it supports
Australia’s largest employer, the food manufacturing industry. We have
households which need water, factories and mines which use it to produce
goods for export and domestic use, power stations which need it to
generate electricity. We have parks, gardens and ovals that need watering.
And we have the rivers and plains themselves, with all their native
species and farmed livestock, needing water.
The rivers helped build Australia’s prosperity. They have also shaped
our national character. They embody the values of traditional aboriginal
society, the pioneers who settled the countryside, the hard-working small
communities that enabled it to prosper. They forged the deep love which so
many of us feel for the Australian landscape and its unique plants and
animals.
These are the values we need to discuss, as a community, as we try to
work out what to do about our rivers and landscape.
Do we want a pristine ecosystem, but few jobs and little prosperity? Do
we want short-term wealth but a desolate landscape and dead rivers? Can we
strike a balance, somewhere in between?
The Murray’s backward flow reminds us that time is running out, both
to have this discussion, and to start working out solutions. We need to
talk to one another as a community, as we have never talked before.
At the moment we’re mostly yelling at one another – greenies,
farmers, tourism operators, small communities, politicians. We’re not
listening very well to one another’s needs and values. So, besides
listening to what our landscape is saying, we also need to listen to each
other.
There is no single, simple solution. The flow regimes in a great river,
like the Murray or the Darling, are quite different in the upper, middle
and lower reaches. The landscapes and industries that depend on those
flows have differing needs. But every upstream action has a downstream
consequence.
The river flowed backward and the Murray mouth may close in future, to
the detriment of many communities and industries as well as the
environment, because there is no longer enough water to go round.
Eventually, Adelaide may find its water unsuited for domestic use.
Can we, as we have done in the grape industry, devise a way to get the
same amount of production and prosperity with half the water? Can we teach
Australians to be more sparing in their water use? Can we save and use the
water that now flows to waste off roads and streets? Can we recycle water
in our homes and cities? Can we water the bush and our farms more
frugally, yet productively? Can we farm more native species profitably,
because they suit the landscape and use less water?
The answer to all these questions is: "Yes, we can." The
technology to achieve these things is either being developed, or else has
been shown by science to be possible. There are many options.
Our rivers and landscape face a slowly-emerging crisis, and we need
first to recognise that. But crisis also spells opportunity. It spells
concerted action by governments, industries and communities. It spells
resilience and imaginative solutions. It spells new roads to prosperity,
arising out of the solutions we develop.
In barely 20 years one third of all the world’s people and nations
will face severe water scarcity. If Australians can solve our challenge
first, we can help them to solve theirs. Then we will have a more
sustainable humanity on a more sustainable planet.