Australian Water Expertise Sought by United States

When it comes to environmental challenges, specifically water scarcity, Australia has a lot in common with the US. There is great scope for sharing knowledge - there is even a case to elevate water security to similar levels as those occupied by defence and intelligence in the alliance relationship.

Water is as worthy and pressing an issue as any other kind of security concern. More than 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, according to the United Nations. Water shortages are increasingly affecting regions in northern China, northern India, South America, and large parts of Africa. Water, essential to human survival, is an increasing source of global conflict. In dry and drought-stricken Australia, policy-makers and scientists have long been grappling with the water problem and, as a result, this country has amassed much collective knowledge and experience of aggressively confronting water shortages.

We have had debates over desalination plants, recycled drinking water, disputes over the allocation of water rights, state governments ceding responsibility to the federal government, public awareness about conservation, restrictions, the desperate battle to save the Murray Darling Basin. The US is now grappling with the same issues, some years after Australia, and it is looking to us for help. Grame Barty, regional director for the Americas for the Australian Trade Commission, told me outside the dialogue that Australia's south and west was a "mirror image" of the US's south and west. Both regions are in severe, unprecedented drought. US cities in this part of the country rely on the Colorado River system for their drinking water, and to support agriculture and industry which has developed in naturally dry, arid parts of the country. But like the Murray Darling, the Colorado is drying up. The problem becomes even scarier when one considers the US population will grow by 100 million by 2050, and at least half of that will be in the south and west of the country. Barty has been bringing water experts from Australia to meet their US counterparts. Whenever he takes an Australian water expert to a forum in the US, "I fill the room". He says: "They believe we have seriously advanced knowledge." Bradley Udall, director of western water assessment for the University of Colorado, was among a delegation of US water experts who toured Australia in November to learn about how we are dealing with our water problems. He said the experience was "life changing", and he will return to learn more. "I have never felt in my entire career the need to do something as strongly as this."

The US is keen to foster a deeper relationship with Australia on water. Perhaps a formal mechanism, similar to the annual talks between Australian and US defence and foreign affairs ministers, should be set up. Australia stands only to gain from strategic co-operation with the US on an issue as important to our country's future viability, and that of much of the world's population, as water. And with such parallels and shared vulnerabilities as those associated with deteriorating fresh water resources, why wouldn't we?

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Source: Cynthia Banham, Sydney Morning Herald, January 25th 2010