Natural Heritage - Number 29
The Journal of the Natural Heritage Trust
Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Australia
Department of the Environment and Heritage, Spring 2006
ISSN 1440-7256
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About this document
There is perpetual thirst in Australia. Our highly variable and often scarce water resources are fundamental to our environment, economy and social wellbeing.
We are not alone on this front. UNESCO has predicted that by 2020 water shortage will become a worldwide problem. A third of the world's population is already facing difficulty due to water shortage and poor quality.
There are few prospects of an increase in water supply but there are still good opportunities for increasing water efficiency from stopping a dripping tap (a $2 washer can save up to 600 litres of water a year) to more efficient farm irrigation and delivering water to wetlands and floodplains for environmental benefit.
This issue of Natural Heritage taps into the water efficiency projects already underway. Much has been achieved through on-ground works and water policy such as the National Water Initiative, a comprehensive strategy driven by the Australian Government to improve water management across the country and encourage best-practice water management.
The Australian Government Water Fund is a $2 billion initiative to invest in water infrastructure projects that includes the highly successful $200 million Community Water Grants Programme. The latest funding round of this programme is supporting projects that will save about 18,500 megalitres of water each year.
The Australian Government Water Fund also includes the $1.6 billion Water Smart Australia Programme, which aims to accelerate the uptake of smart technologies and practices in water use, and the $200 million Raising National Water Standards Programme, which invests in Australia's national capacity to measure, monitor and manage its water resources.
The Living Murray is a $500 million programme aimed at reducing the level of water overallocation and to achieve specific environmental outcomes in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Recent research has found that water management practices adopted by the Murray and Murrumbidgee basins' $3.1 billion irrigation industry have substantially improved over the past decade. A report by the CRC for Irrigation Futures found that the rice industry has reduced their water consumption ten fold in the past decade.
All of these funding programmes complement the $1.4 billion National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality and the $3 billion Natural Heritage Trust, which together have helped improve irrigation practices across 19,300 hectares, saving 5,600 megalitres of water.
We face a great challenge to better manage our scarce water resources now and into the future. The Australian Government is committed to achieving environmentally sustainable water resource management.
Senator Ian Campbell
Australian Minister for the Environment and Heritage
Peter McGauran
Australian Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
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