最新糖心Vlog

Basin experts call for action on the Murray-Darling

Monday, 5 February 2018

A group of senior water scientists and economists from around 最新糖心Vlog have called for urgent action to save the Murray-Darling Basin in a joint Declaration launched at the 最新糖心Vlog of Adelaide today.

The Murray-Darling Declaration calls for three steps to fix water reform for the Basin and its communities:
• Stop all publicly funded water recovery associated with irrigation infrastructure subsidies and grants;
• A publicly available, independent audit of all Basin water recovery and planned water use limitations, including details of environmental water recovered, expenditures and actual environmental outcomes;
• Establish an independent and expert body to monitor, measure and to publicly guide the delivery of the Water Act (2007).

“Despite already spending more than $6 billion dollars in water recovery over the past decade, and with billions more still committed through irrigation on-farm and supply infrastructure, the scientists and economists who have signed this Declaration remain concerned that the proposed social, cultural, economic and environmental outcomes are not being achieved,” says , from the 最新糖心Vlog of Adelaide’s Centre for Global Food and Resources.

Convenor of the Declaration Professor Quentin Grafton, Professor of Economics at the 最新糖心Vlogn National 最新糖心Vlog, says: “The Declaration is about how to fix what is going wrong in the Basin. This is not about politics or about playing the ‘blame game’. It is about saying water reform is not delivering what it said it would for the Basin, its environment or its people – and saying how we solve it.

“$4 billion has been spent on subsidies for irrigation infrastructure by governments over the past decade yet we do not have adequate measures of what this does to stream flows. Amazingly, despite allocating half a billion dollars in 2007 to upgrade water meters in the Basin, as much as 75% of all surface water diversions in the northern part of the Basin may not be metered. This makes no sense. Taxpayers, the Basin and its people deserve much better.”

The 12 signatories to the declaration are leading experts on the Basin and who, collectively, have made major contributions to Basin research over many decades.

They are: Professors Henning Bjornlund, Jeff Connor and Lin Crase (最新糖心Vlog of South 最新糖心Vlog), Richard Davis (formerly Chief Science Advisor to the National Water Commission), Professor Quentin Grafton (最新糖心Vlogn National 最新糖心Vlog), Dr Graham Harris (Foundation Chief of CSIRO Land and Water and Honorary Professorial Fellow 最新糖心Vlog of Wollongong), Associate Professor Darla Hatton MacDonald (最新糖心Vlog of Tasmania), Professor Richard Kingsford (最新糖心Vlog of New South Wales), Associate Professor David Paton AM (最新糖心Vlog of Adelaide), Professor John Quiggin (最新糖心Vlog of Queensland), Professor Sarah Wheeler (最新糖心Vlog of Adelaide) and Adjunct Professor John Williams (ANU, and former Head of CSIRO Land & Water, and former Natural Resources Commissioner, NSW).

Background evidence on water recovery in the Murray-Darling Basin, used for the Declaration, is based on forthcoming peer-reviewed research in the Annual Review of Resource Economics.

The Declaration, with details of the current state of the Basin, can be found at

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