I have written a series of articles on Murray-Darling water, focusing on the Darling, irrigation and the economics of water in the Basin. While there is much more of interest, these are compelling issues that demand considered action. I hope you get something worthwhile from the articles below:
Piping hot water
Water Sharing in the Murray-Darling
Water Use in the Murray-Darling
Darling River water
The Benefits of Rain in Canberra
I am not calling for any specific action. I am, instead, trying to provide some sense of what is happening and has happened. Where possible I give some insight into the possible future for the Basin. I have put quite a bit of work into the articles and have endeavoured to cross check the information provided and I have provided links to key documents that I have used as source material. Wherever possible I have made the original author’s work available as a PDF for you to read yourself. Any errors of interpretation are, of course, mine.
Further reading is at the end of the page, however the main sources are the BoM and its excellent National Water Account1 publication, the ABS2 for data and analysis (especially the tools for generating charts form Survey data) and ABARES3 for agricultural economic data. Finally, I use information publicly available via the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, who commissions significant research on the environment, economy and communities within the Basin – as it is supposed to. Wikipedia((https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray%E2%80%93Darling_basin)) and New Scientist4are other general sources. I try to reference Wikipedia where this does not make the article hard to read. Footnotes work ok most of the time.
Peta Guy
Blog owner|Consultant|Lives in the Basin
I have been a consultant for more than 30 years now. I work with local, state, national and international Governments to improve peoples’ lives. I do this by helping Government to improve its services, respond to challenges and internationally to build institutional strength in emerging democracies. I work extensively with Complex Adaptive SystemsA complex adaptive system is a system in which a perfect understanding of the individual parts does not automatically convey a perfect understanding of the whole system's behavior. The study of complex adaptive systems, a.... See the link to see what that means.
You may see some of that in other parts of the blog. You will not see much about the details of what I did but you will see why I have enjoyed it all.
For this page and associated articles, I need to declare that I was the Senior Executive responsible for managing The Living Murray Initiative First Step Proposal and immediately subsequent work aimed to recover the health of the Basin communities, economy and environment. That does not make me the authority on the Basin, however I have had the luxury of talking to many of those who are.
Oh … I play and umpire cricket, too. Cricket is critically dependent on water BTW.