Publication (Media): NEED TO BREAK THE PATTERN

Publication Type:	Media Release
Publication Name:	NEED TO BREAK THE PATTERN

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Cullen, Peter (2001) NEED TO BREAK THE PATTERN - Apr 4 2001, CRCFE, Canberra - Media Release.

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KICKER: The following article is based on an article by Professor Peter Cullen in “Watershed”, a periodic publication of the CRC for Freshwater Ecology.

START STORY

MUCH STILL TO BE DONE

NEED TO BREAK THE PATTERN

If Australia is to stop destroying its rivers we need to “stop making the mistakes of the past, rather than blindly repeating them”, according to the Chief Executive of the CRC for Freshwater Ecology, Professor Peter Cullen.

“Clearing land and then being surprised by salinity in 20 to 30 years is just plain stupid with our present knowledge.”

And the time had come to move beyond rivers to catchments, Professor Cullen said.

“We need to stop fooling ourselves and the world that having RAMSAR wetlands is any use unless we have RAMSAR catchments.”

“We know what has to be done.

“Regional targets - like the flow and salinity targets agreed for the Murray Darling Basin - have to be agreed and addressed in the context of the strong community-based planning that has developed under the Natural Heritage Trust and those plans need to include State and National priorities in a way not achieved to date.”

And once the plans have been approved they should receive “block funding” to enable their implementation, he said.

In a review of progress before the latest round of Council of Australian Governments (COAG) discussions on water-related issues Professor Cullen said the “long-overdue reforms” had produced “economic and environmental benefits”, but there is still a considerable way to go to complete the agenda put in place in February 1994.

“At that time the Council (COAG) agreed action was needed to arrest widespread natural resource degradation in all jurisdictions occasioned, in part, by water use and that a package of measures was required to address the economic, environmental and social implications of future water reform.”

It is now time for further action to address the current problems being faced by the environment and resource managers, Professor Cullen said, even though there remains a great deal to be done to achieve those initial objectives.

“Completing the 1994 agenda, while necessary, is not sufficient to address the problems now being faced and the next step, in rivers that are over-allocated, is to buy back water for the environment; which can be done only where property right have been resolved and where mechanisms are in place to ensure later Governments don’t just resume printing licences for water which is not there,” he said.

However, water trading is not ecologically neutral and the relative ecological importance of traded water to the donor and receiving waters should also be assessed and considered in the terms of trade, he said.

He sees a need for rivers to have an environmental manager to make good use of the water that is available for the environment and for “serious funding” for river restoration.

“In degraded rivers we need to repair riparian zones, remove un-needed weirs and barrages, and put effective fish ladders on the ones that must be retained, and we need multi-level off-takes on storages to reduce the thermal pollution that impacts on native fish.”

(The fish-ladder issue appears to have been addressed for the Murray-Darling system by the March decision of COAG to construct fish passages on all weirs in the basin, although whether or not the allocation of $10 million for that work and to address the issue of cold-water releases from Hume Dam will be adequate is by no means clear.)

He also sees a need for well-designed and operated monitoring and assessment programs to provide publicly available and well-interpreted data on river flow, water quality and the ecological condition of rivers and their flood plains and wetlands.

Other issues still requiring attention include measurement of entitlements by volume and attention to the issue of water quality, in the context of the COAG commitment to specify entitlements in terms of “ownership, volume, reliability, transferability and, where appropriate, quality”, he said.

And the requirement to provide “formal allocations for the environment, based on the best available scientific advice” requires a clear entitlement for the environment, not “just ensuring the traditional extractive rights of farmers and declaring any residual for the environment”.

There has been some progress in the area of integrated catchment management and integration of surface and groundwater management but that progress has been patchy and integration of groundwater into management programs has been slow, he said, and while there has been some “formal designation of over-allocated rivers”, moves towards remedial action - also a COAG requirement - have been “more symbolic than real”.

And the commitment to research into environmental flow research has been “weak”, with announced funds appearing to have been syphoned off for other purposes.

There appears to have been no comparison of inter-agency performance, only slow progress on the issue of making greater use of wastewater and strategies for handling storm water in urban areas, and limited progress on the requirement to protect areas of river of high environmental value, with few rivers designated as being of high value, let alone protected.

What is needed, Professor Cullen said, is for Governments to re-commit to these objectives, establish clear targets and “develop some institutional arrangements which might allow more progress”.

He also sees a need for identification and protection of intact river systems.

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