The Murray-Darling Basin: A Land of Hard Compromises

In Australia, the world’s driest inhabited continent (Antarctica is officially drier), the politics of water remain a prominent issue that requires a great deal of compromise. Nowhere is this more evident than within the country’s prime agricultural region, the Murray-Darling Basin, which continually proves to be highly complex and divisive issue.

The basin is a system of rivers and creeks that flows toward two main rivers, the Murray and the Darling, and enters the ocean at the mouth of the Murray in South Australia. The basin covers over 1 million square kilometers (386,000 square miles), including significant areas of four states plus the Australian Capital Territory. The region is responsible for one-third of Australia’s agricultural production.

Despite its array of water passages and its agricultural importance, the catchment area only  receives around 6 percent of Australia’s rainfall, and many of its rivers and creeks are shallow and slow-moving. This makes the usage of its limited water resources highly contested, particularly by “downstream” farms and communities who see “upstream” regions as having an unfair advantage. The multiple jurisdictions involved further complicate the situation, with each state having its own unique needs and concerns.

A severe drought from 2002 to 2009 brought issues concerning water resources in the basin to a critical precipice, with state and territory governments unable to reach consensus on how water allocation and environmental protection should proceed. This led to the establishment of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) by the Federal government to administer the “equitable, efficient, and sustainable use of the water and other natural resources” throughout the basin.

After a four-year gestation period, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was enacted in November 2012. This plan created binding limits on the amount of water (surface and groundwater) that can be sustainably taken from the basin. It identified risks to the region’s water resources, such as from climate change, and created strategies to counteract those risks. The plan also sought to optimize environmental outcomes in regards to both water quality and the region’s flora and fauna.

However, the focus to bring life back to the ailing river system after the drought has had a significant economic impact on many communities, which had their water usage restricted. With agricultural yields down, several irrigation-dependant communities in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales are experiencing significant spikes in unemployment and fear the death of their communities is nearing.

During a meeting of the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council in Adelaide in mid-November, there was an attempt to find a balance between the health of the river system, the concerns of downstream communities, and the economic stress on the region’s northern communities. This led to the MDBA announcing a reduced water recovery target of 320 billion liters for northern irrigators, instead of the originally proposed 390 billion liters. Federal Agriculture Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce welcomed the compromise, stating: "You've got a moral responsibility for those doing it tough to not make their life tougher." It is estimated that this new measure will save around 200 jobs in small irrigation-dependant communities.

Yet the announcement to allow upstream communities access to an extra 70 billion liters of water has angered the South Australian government. Not only does the city of Adelaide rely on the Murray River for its drinking water, but also an insipid water flow has created a salinity problem toward the river’s mouth, heavily impacting the area’s flora and fauna. During a dinner following the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council meeting, the South Australian water minister launched an expletive-laden tirade against Joyce and the Victorian water minister, due to a belief that South Australia was being unfairly treated by the upstream states.

Environmental groups have also raised concerns that this new compromised water allocation plan will harm wetlands, threatening a number of species of native fish and waterbirds. Jonathan La Nauze of the Australian Conservation Foundation told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that the move was "a visionless retreat from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority's core business,” adding that “there are no jobs on a dead river.”

Despite the creation of a central authority to administer the water resources within the basin, attempting to find a balance between unique social, economic, and environmental interests, alongside the interests of five subnational jurisdictions, remains a difficult proposition. Due to the limited water resources within the region there will always be a threat to the region’s status as Australia’s food basket. In order to manage the the long-term sustainability of the river system, alongside the viability of many of the small towns that exist within it, difficult compromises will continue to be a way of life.