Crucible For Survival: Environmental Security and Justice in the Indian Ocean Region

Chapter 9: The Essence of Life: Water Security in the Indian Ocean Region

133 9 The Essence of Life water security in the indian ocean region melissa risely and timothy doyle We are sitting at the mouth of the Murray River, the largest river in Australia. We are waiting patiently for the arrival of a famous Australian long distance swimmer—Susie Moroney—who, in an act of symbolic protest at the ill-health of the river system, has vowed to swim its length, from source to mouth. This enormous river system begins in Queensland, thousands of miles away to the North, and winds itself through New South Wales, Victoria, and then finally flows through to the sea in South Australia, where the warmer waters of the Indian Ocean meet the Antarctic. Or, that is what used to happen. On this particular day in 2003, and on many other days leading up to this, the largest river in Australia has stopped flowing to the sea. While waiting for the swimmer’s appearance, we decide to walk from the Goolwa side of the mouth (an historic town once bustling with activity as the port that linked the continental trade from the river to the trade of the Indian Ocean) to the other side, where the mighty and magical Coorong begins, the land of the Ngarrindjeri, the indigenous people of this region. Once upon a time, walking on water would have been the exclusive domain of gods, the holy, the deified. But today, we mere mortals began walking across the sandbar that separated the river from the sea. The feeling we incurred was simply bizarre. We were doing “the unnatural,” and we both agreed that if ever there was a single case of environmental disaster that most abruptly described the impact of European invasion to this Great South Land, then this was it: the cessation of the life source itself, the wringing out of an entire river system. The Murray River is dying. Now, in 2007, Australia is experiencing its worst drought ever, with record low inflows to the Murray-Darling basin. It is having an effect on all members of the community, from farmers to residents of cities and towns. And what makes this issue even more serious is that this environmental catastrophe is happening on the driest inhabited continent on earth. In 2000, a World Health Organization report argued that unless fundamental changes to water usage, agricultural practices, and industrial practices were addressed along the river system, then Adelaide, the capital of South Australia with a population of over a million people, would be unfit for habitation by as early as 2050. One of the key problems contributing to this extreme degradation and environmental insecurity is that state governments have only shown interest in the river system where it exists within their own borders. The problems of upriver and downriver states have generated little interest. Australia is a federation of states, and the problems of other states have historically been ignored by domestic state governments. Although there has been a long-standing federal authority in existence to tackle these cross-border issues—the Murray-Darling Basin Commission (Doyle and Kellow 1995)—attempts to increase flows have been largely unsuccessful, due to a lack of political will founded on the politics of narrow, state-based self-interest. As we shall see later in this part dedicated to water issues, these problems are even more exacerbated in regions where rivers flow through national boundaries, not just state ones. The initial sparks that have led to the Murray disaster began with a post-war, nation-building exercise: the building of the Snowy Mountain scheme, in the upstream reaches of the system. Mega dams, along with other mass engineering solutions, are not solutions at all, but actually are contributors to human and environmental insecurity. Unfortunately, just as wealthy nations on the planet have accepted their pitfalls, the technology is being sold to the third world, with the result being, for example, in India and China, attempts to engineer linkages to make all river systems into one large system. Apart from the obvious mass displacement of peoples, the negative environmental outcomes of these colossal engineering and nation-building efforts will be long-term and unimaginable in the scale of their ecological devastation. It is not just the Murray, but in fact all Australian rivers and estuaries that are in crisis because of human regulation of environmental flows, the effects of intensive irrigation and pollution, vegetation clearance, and inappropriate development and land management. Diversion of water from...