Moving water @ Sydney

My son had to do a science project the other day about whether science fiction was science or fiction. As part of the project we watched a few science fiction movies and read some books together. It was an interesting experience, not only because I got to see some of my youth favourite movies (for example: Bladerunner) and reread some of my favourite science fiction books.

While you weren’t watching our Faculty changed its name. It actually went with very little fanfare, but I actually think it is quite significant. I really like our new name, because it better highlights how agriculture and the environment are connected, and this has important implications for our research directions.

This is actually from some news which was reported a while ago, but because I just read an interesting paper, it made it a lot more relevant. The issue was that the Murray Darling Basin Authority in the plan, while decreasing the amount of surface water in extraction licences it had increased the amount available from groundwater. The paper I read looked at the impact of the last drought on the groundwater reserves in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB).This is actually from some news which was reported a while ago, but because I just read an interesting paper, it made it a lot more relevant. The issue was that the Murray Darling Basin Authority in the plan, while decreasing the amount of surface water in extraction licences it had increased the amount available from groundwater. The paper I read looked at the impact of the last drought on the groundwater reserves in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB).

With the ongoing floods in NSW and the Queensland state election, it was not surprising that over the last week I got a few phone calls and e-mails from media outlets who wanted me to comment. In general, I have been stand-offish about this, in other words, I was not keen to make another statement about my views on the flooding, the potential for future flooding and how we might manage flooding. It is not that I don’t have an opinion about this, but there were two other reasons why I felt it was better not to comment.

I just read a paper by Frank Rijsberman, former head of IWMI, the international water management institute. The paper is titled: water scarcity: fact or fiction? I also just read the overview of the UN report on global sustainability called “resilient people, resilient planet, a future worth choosing”. In addition, I am at the moment in India for a workshop on water and food security.

This year has just been announced as the year of the farmer, and it is really good to see that science has a central mention in the campaign. I think it is really important that there is some effort to reconnect the urban population with the agricultural production and rural population. Ironically, in this year of the farmer, one of Australia’s supermarket giants, Coles, is slashing prices of fruit and vegetables, possibly as part of a price war with the other supermarket giant Woolworths. Given that we have just had the same happening with milk prices, this seems to be not such good news for farmers. Consumers tend to be focussed on prices and for them this is good news, what I want to examine in this post is whether this is actually good for society.

Since the draft Murray Basin plan came out, the uproar has hardly died down. As an academic and a hydrologist, and one running a blog, I have struggled with pressure to also comment. Nobody really directly asked me why I hadn’t written a blog, but I was asked what I thought about it. On the other hand I actually did not want to comment because so many other comments have already been made. So has enough already been said?