By Jo Cooper

Australia is perched on the edge of a “very sensitive debate” over water, where lawmakers and citizens will need to consider innovative environmental planning to cope with what could be a long-term climate shift.

Professor Mike Young, director of The Environment Institute and research chair in water economics and management at the University of Adelaide, recently told delegates at the 7th Australian Water Summit in Brisbane that the world may have gone through a “step-change” to a dry regime.

 “A 10 per cent reduction in rainfall commonly means a 30, 40, 50 per cent reduction in runoff or inflows into the system, which means you have to contemplate a world with half as much water,” he said.

He said if the world was dealing with a lengthy climate shift, “the very important question is: are we prepared to think about modifying the rivers and modifying our environmental objectives given the reality of where we are?”.

“This is a very sensitive debate.”

Watering priorities for rivers was one option he raised.

“I think there’s a need to start using some of the systematics literature that’s been used in national parks selection – particularly the ideas around complementarity, where you identify the best place to get the greatest representation,” he said.

Professor Young said currently there seemed to be a desire to try to protect everything in a river system, but this needed to evolve to an understanding that if you protected one suite of species you did not actually need to protect it again – “you go to something which is a complement to what you already have.”

In his presentation, he also spoke about frontiers of water reform in Australia and what the future may hold.

“I think one of the most interesting debates we’re going to have in the next six months is what type of plan we’re going to have for the Murray-Darling basin,” he said.

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority recently released a concept statement, explaining the approach it would be taking to deliver a formal Basin plan, due in 2011.

Professor Young said a literal interpretation of the governing legislation would have the plan as unstructured with “1000 pages of prescriptive detail about everything”.

He said it would make more sense to have a high-level strategic document which established some hard principles, accompanied by dynamic schedules that could continuously evolve.

Coupled with the Murray-Darling work were questions over how state plans could be aligned with changes in the basin plan “and the very important issue around whether we would have further entitlement reform”.

“There are important issues around the scale of entitlements and whether you have entitlements that are fungible in the sense that they are consistent over very large areas,” Professor Young said.

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