The age of cheap, abundant fossil fuel energy is coming to an end
The age of carbon accounting and pricing is here
Water security will be a perennial issue for southern Australia
Each of these has their own imperatives, but their interactions are equally, if not more important
We tend to deal with these issues in science and policy silos
But at operational levels, the trade-offs are very real already
What sorts of knowledge do we need, and how might we get it?
1. The Climate-Energy-Water nexus: what sorts of knowledge do we need, and how might we get it? Andrew Campbell Triple Helix Consulting www.triplehelix.com.au
7. Water, energy, and GDP from Proust, Dovers, Foran, Newell, Steffen & Troy (2007) Energy & GDP Water & GDP Water and energy have historically been closely coupled with GDP in Australia Our challenge now is to radically reduce the energy, carbon and water-intensity of our economy
26. For more information e.g. Paddock to Plate Policy Propositions for Sustainable Food Systems Powerful Choices: transition to a biofuel economy www.triplehelix.com.au
Editor's Notes
Climate, Water and Energy are converging as ‘issues’ of public policy concern. Moreover, they overlap with many other issues including food, human health, carbon, soil, planning, infrastructure, emergency management, national security and so on. Yet our standard response at a policy level is to deal with such issues separately. We default to disaggregate and delineate ‘turf’, rather than to focus on the intersections, interactions, interfaces and interstices between them, where more fruitful insights and pathways might be found. Terry Moran, in a lecture to the IPAA last year, noted that “... The APS still generates too much policy within single departments and agencies to address challenges that span a range of departments and agencies… We are not good at recruiting creative thinkers. ” A similar observation could be made about the way we fund and manage research. This presentation will explore the types of knowledge required to help us to capture the great opportunities that this convergence conveys, and how we might go about acquiring and sharing such knowledge. It will do so using contemporary case studies at a regional level. For organisations like water utilities and irrigation companies, the climate-water-energy nexus is not an abstract concept, but an everyday reality that has huge implications for business viability, right now.
The world needs to double food production over the next forty years, using less land and water, and paying much higher real prices for energy and nutrients. At the same time, we have to deal with climate change — the biggest market failure of all time — by undertaking radical economic reform in decoupling carbon emissions from economic growth. Australia is one of the countries most affected by climate change, Victoria is one of the most affected parts of Australia, and agriculture is among the most affected sectors of the economy. There will be intense pressures to change Victorian farming systems: to cope with a warming, drying, less reliable climate; to respond to greenhouse policy changes; to meet market demands and community expectations; and to adapt to demographic change. There is a grave risk that rural landscapes will be caught in a dreadful squeeze between a drying climate, and stressed farming systems and rural communities undergoing rapid reform. The habitat fragmentation, the death of paddock trees, the loss of wetlands and the consequent pressures on wildlife that we have seen in recent decades are likely to accelerate, desolating rural landscapes. Unless � Unless we find much more effective ways of reconnecting native vegetation across rural landscapes, and of securing water to maintain ecological function. This means finding ways of working landscape restoration into and around farming systems, and making it pay for people to do so. This presentation will explore the likely drivers of change in Victorian rural landscapes over coming decades and the most prospective options for large scale and rapid landscape restoration and buffering. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. Paths to it are made, not found.
THESE ISSUES ARE NOT UNIQUE TO THE MURRAY DARLING BASIN. PERTH HAS BEEN THE CANARY IN THE COAL MINE FOR DECLINING WATER AVAILABILITY. THIS GRAPH IS SIMILAR TO THE EARLIER ONE FOR THE MDB. IT TRACKS THE INFLOW TO PERTH’S STORAGES SINCE 1911. THE GREEN LINE REPRESENTS THE AVERAGE ANNUAL INFLOW OF 338GL FROM 1911 TO 1974. INCREDIBLY, NOT A SINGLE YEAR SINCE 1974 HAS REACHED THAT PREVIOUS LONG TERM AVERAGE. THE 20 YEARS FROM 1975 TO 1996 SAW AN AVERAGE INFLOW OF 177GL - JUST OVER HALF THE PREVIOUS AVERAGE. JUST AS IN THE MDB, THE CURRENT DROUGHT IS EVEN WORSE AGAIN, WITH THE AVERAGE NOW DROPPING TO AROUND 100GL PER YEAR - LESS THAN ONE THIRD OF WHAT IT WAS FOR MOST OF LAST CENTURY.