Water planning 101: stabilise the population

Our water (and urban) planners are whizzes at supply-side solutions. But don't engage meaningfully, with the population-demand side. Not our department, mate.

Shouldn't rampant population fit in with limited and heavily exploited water resources? No, Down Under, it works the other way round.

In eight informative chapters, this Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) report Big thirsty Australiaattempts to put P-for-population back into the water-planning equation:

[Treasury] assumptions of water abundance are dangerously flawed. Expanded desalination, rather than being a solution, is a further symptom…

Constant expansion of water infrastructure to accommodate population increase is a costly exercise in running to stand still… stable population would be by far the cheapest way to meet Australia's water requirements…

The fatalistic acceptance of official population projections has meant there is a population blind spot in Australia's water planning.

Big Thirsty Australia

First, the report checks water-extraction cultures and customs, from indigenous times to the present. Then fondly recalls Peter Cullen, died 2008.

He was an endangered species, amongst our water scientists. Linking "water deficits" to "rampant population growth".

It's not just the low rainfall, it's low runoff - 12% of rainfall compared with 40-50% on other continents.

Yet population growth has skyrocketed after 2000 hitting 2.5% annually, in 2023. At 27 million the population's suddenly eight million higher.

"Whether a town or city has enough water to meet added demand is not considered." Assuming, proliferating desal plants can re-secure the system.

Though the Millennium Drought triggered "reform", in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB), the MDB Plan has yet to deliver the goods for traditional owners, or others.

"Sustainable" water security

Be wary, cautions SPA, of "sustainable" water claims.

Aussie water-planning operates on weak sustainability. "A sliding scale where ecosystems can be incrementally diminished to accommodate the imperatives of forever growth."In pub parlance, she'll be right.