27/04/2020

(AU) No Water, No Leadership: New Murray Darling Basin Report Reveals States’ Climate Gamble

The Conversation - 

Dean Lewins/ AAP

Dr Daniel Connell is a Research Fellow at the Resources, Environment and Development Program, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. He specialises in governance issues relating to trans-boundary rivers. Dr Connell has written extensively about the Murray Darling Basin, most recently in Basin Futures, a book co-edited with Quentin Grafton and published by ANU Press.
A report investigating how states share water in the Murray Darling Basin describes a fascinating contrast between state cultures – in particular, risk-averse South Australia and buccaneering New South Wales.

Perhaps surprising is the report’s sparse discussion of the Murray Darling Basin Plan, which has been the focus of irrigators’ anger and denunciation by National Party leaders: Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack and NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro.

John Littleproud commissioned Mick Keelty to investigate the changing inflow of water in the Murray Darling Basin. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

In general terms, the Murray Darling Basin Plan was originally intended to make water management in the Murray Darling Basin more environmentally sustainable. Its critics see it as a restraint on development, and complain it has taken water away from irrigators during a time of extreme drought.

In response to McCormack and Barliaro’s criticisms of the plan in late 2019, federal water minister (and senior National Party figure) David Littleproud commissioned Mick Keelty as Interim Inspector General of MDB Water Resources.

For the new report, Keelty investigated the changing distribution of “inflows” – water flowing into the River Murray in the southern states.

Climate change has brought the inflow to just a trickle. This dramatic reduction over the past 20 years is what Keelty has described as “the most telling finding”.

He also investigated the reserve policies under which the three states choose – or don’t choose – to hold back water in Hume and Dartmouth Dams to manage future droughts.

Keelty says there’s little transparency or clarity about how much water states are allocated under the Murray Darling Basin Agreement (the arrangement for sharing water between the states which underpins the Basin Plan). This failure in communication and leadership across such a vital system must change.

Sharing water across three states

One major finding of Keelty’s inquiry is that the federal government has little power to change the MDB Agreement between the three states, which was first approved in 1914-15. Any amendment requires the approval of all three governments.
To increase the volume of water provided to NSW irrigators, South Australia and Victoria would need to agree to reduce the volumes supplied to their own entitlement holders. That will not happen.

Why has the agreement lasted so long?

Over the past century it has proved robust under a wide range of conditions. Its central principle is to share water with a proportion-of-available-flow formula, giving each state a percentage of whatever is available, no matter whether it’s a lot, or not much.

After receiving its share of the River Murray flows, each state is then free to manage its allocation as it wishes.

Historically, South Australia and Victoria have chosen to reserve or hold back a larger proportion of their shares each year in Hume and Dartmouth dams to use in future droughts, compared with New South Wales.

In part this difference derives from the long-term water needs of orchards and vines in South Australia and Victoria, in contrast to annual crops such as rice and cotton in New South Wales.

Deputy prime minister Michael McCormack has publicly condemned the MDB plan. Mick Tsikas/ AAP

As a result, South Australia and Victoria have a higher proportion of high security entitlements. That means they receive 100% most years. Only in extreme drought years is their allocation reduced.

NSW, on the other hand, has a higher proportion of low security general entitlements. In dry and normal years they receive a proportion of their entitlements. Only in wet years do they get the full 100%. (These differences in reliability are reflected in the cost of entitlements on the water market.)

Reliability of water supply

 What’s more, each state makes its own decision about how its state allocation is shared between its entitlement holders (95% of water goes to irrigators the rest supplies towns and industry).

South Australia chooses to distribute a much smaller proportion to its entitlement holders than New South Wales. It also restricted the number of licences in the 1970s. That combination ensures a very high level of reliability in supply. Victoria took a similar approach.

But New South Wales did not restrict licences until the 1990s. It also recognised unused entitlements, so further reducing the frequency of years in which any individual would receive their full allocation of water.
When climate change is taken into account these differences between the three states result in their irrigators having significantly different risk profiles.

The climate change threat to the basin is very real

 Despite climate denial in the National Party, the threat is very real in the MDB. The report describes a massive reduction in inflows over the past 20 years, approximately half compared with the previous century. One drought could be an aberration, but two begins to look like a pattern.

The report also suggests that in many cases irrigator expectations of what should be normal were formed during the wet period Australia experienced between the second world war and the 1990s.

Added to this have been business decisions by many irrigators to sell their entitlements and rely on the water market, a business model based on what now seems like unrealistic inflow expectations.

In effect, successive New South Wales governments – a significant part of the state’s irrigation sector in the southern part of the state and the National Party – gambled against the climate and are now paying a high price.

In desperation, they’re focusing on alternative sources. This includes the water in Hume and Dartmouth held under the reserves policy of the two other states; environmental entitlements managed by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder; the very large volume of water lost to evaporation in the lower lakes in South Australia; and the possibility of savings resulting from changes to management of the system by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.

NSW governments have gambled against climate change and are now paying a high price. AAP Image/Dean Lewins

Failure in leadership and communication

 For reasons already outlined, the state reserves policy is not likely to change and use of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder environmental water entitlements would not be permitted under current legislation. Management of the lower lakes is being reviewed through another investigation so is not discussed in the report.

The report also states that management of the MDB Authority is subject to regular detailed assessment by state governments, and they have assessed its performance as satisfactory.

However the report was critical of the performance of all MDB governments with regard to leadership and communications suggesting that failures in those areas were largely responsible for the public concern which triggered its investigation.

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The Solutions To The Climate Crisis No One Is Talking About

Common Dreams - Robert Reich

Make no mistake: the simultaneous crisis of inequality and climate is no fluke. Both are the result of decades of deliberate choices made, and policies enacted, by ultra-wealthy and powerful corporations.

"We deserve a world without fossil fuels," writes Reich. "A world in which workers and communities thrive and our shared climate comes before industry profits." (Image: Inequality Media)

Robert Reich is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies.
He served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration.
Robert Reich is the author of many books, including the best-sellers Aftershock, The Work of Nations, Beyond Outrage, and Saving Capitalism. 
Both our economy and the environment are in crisis.

Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few while the majority of Americans struggle to get by.

The climate crisis is worsening inequality, as those who are most economically vulnerable bear the brunt of flooding, fires, and disruptions of supplies of food, water, and power.

At the same time, environmental degradation and climate change are themselves byproducts of widening inequality. The political power of wealthy fossil fuel corporations has stymied action on climate change for decades.

Focused only on maximizing their short-term interests, those corporations are becoming even richer and more powerful — while sidelining workers, limiting green innovation, preventing sustainable development, and blocking direct action on our dire climate crisis.

Make no mistake: the simultaneous crisis of inequality and climate is no fluke. Both are the result of decades of deliberate choices made, and policies enacted, by ultra-wealthy and powerful corporations.



We can address both crises by doing four things:

►First, create green jobs

 Investing in renewable energy could create millions of family sustaining, union jobs and build the infrastructure we need for marginalized communities to access clean water and air.
The transition to a renewable energy-powered economy can add 550,000 jobs each year while saving the US economy $78 billion through 2050.
In other words, a Green New Deal could turn the climate crisis into an opportunity - one that both addresses the climate emergency and creates a fairer and more equitable society.

►Second, stop dirty energy

 A massive investment in renewable energy jobs isn’t enough to combat the climate crisis. If we are going to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must tackle the problem at its source: Stop digging up and burning more oil, gas, and coal.

The potential carbon emissions from these fossil fuels in the world’s currently developed fields and mines would take us well beyond the 1.5°C increased warming that Nobel Prize winning global scientists tell us the planet can afford. Given this, it’s absurd to allow fossil fuel corporations to start new dirty energy projects.

Even as fossil fuel companies claim to be pivoting toward clean energy, they are planning to invest trillions of dollars in new oil and gas projects that are inconsistent with global commitments to limit climate change. And over half of the industry’s expansion is projected to happen in the United States. Allowing these projects means locking ourselves into carbon emissions we can’t afford now, let alone in the decades to come.

Even if the U.S. were to transition to 100 percent renewable energy today, continuing to dig fossil fuels out of the ground will lead us further into climate crisis. If the U.S. doesn’t stop now, whatever we extract will simply be exported and burned overseas.

We will all be affected, but the poorest and most vulnerable among us will bear the brunt of the devastating impacts of climate change.

►Third, kick fossil fuel companies out of our politics

  For decades, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP have been polluting our democracy by pouring billions of dollars into our politics and bankrolling elected officials to enact policies that protect their profits.

The oil and gas industry spent over $103 million on the 2016 federal elections alone. And that’s just what they were required to report: that number doesn’t include the untold amounts of “dark money” they’ve been using to buy-off politicians and corrupt our democracy. The most conservative estimates still put their spending at 10 times that of environmental groups and the renewable energy industry.

As a result, American taxpayers are shelling out $20 billion a year to bankroll oil and gas projects – a huge transfer of wealth to the top. And that doesn’t even include hundreds of billions of dollars of indirect subsidies that cost every United States citizen roughly $2,000 a year. This has to stop.

And we’ve got to stop giving away public lands for oil and gas drilling. In 2018, under Trump, the Interior Department made $1.1 billion selling public land leases to oil and gas companies, an all-time record – triple the previous 2008 record, totaling more than 1.5 million acres for drilling alone, threatening multiple cultural sites and countless wildlife.

As recently as last September, the Trump administration opened 1.56 million acres of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, threatening Indigenous cultural heritage and hundreds of species that call it home.

That’s not all. The ban on exporting crude oil should be reintroduced and extended to other fossil fuels. The ban, in place for 40 years, was lifted in 2015, just days after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement. After years of campaigning by oil executives, industry heads, and their army of lobbyists, the fossil fuel industry finally got its way.

We can’t wait for these changes to be introduced in 5 or 10 years time — we need them now.

►Fourth, require the fossil fuel companies that have profited from environmental injustice compensate the communities they’ve harmed

 As if buying-off our democracy wasn’t enough, these corporations have also deliberately misled the public for years on the amount of damage their products have been causing.

For instance, as early as 1977, Exxon’s own scientists were warning managers that fossil fuel use would warm the planet and cause irreparable damage.

In the 1980s, Exxon shut down its internal climate research program and shifted to funding a network of advocacy groups, lobbying arms, and think tanks whose sole purpose was to cloud public discourse and block action on the climate crisis.

The five largest oil companies now spend about $197 million a year on ad campaigns claiming they care about the climate — all the while massively increasing their spending on oil and gas extraction.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans, especially poor, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, already have to fight to drink clean water and breathe clean air as their communities are devastated by climate-fueled hurricanes, floods, and fires. As of 2015, nearly 21 million people relied on community water systems that violated health-based quality standards.

Going by population, that’s essentially 200 Flint, Michigans, happening all at once. If we continue on our current path, many more communities run the risk of becoming “sacrifice zones,” where citizens are left to survive the toxic aftermath of industrial activity with little, if any, help from the entities responsible for creating it.

Climate denial and rampant pollution are not victimless crimes. Fossil fuel corporations must be held accountable, and be forced to pay for the damage they’ve wrought.
If these solutions sound drastic to you, it’s because they are. They have to be if we have any hope of keeping our planet habitable. The climate crisis is not a far-off apocalyptic nightmare — it is our present day.
Australia’s bushfires wiped out a billion animals, California’s fire season wreaks more havoc every year, and record-setting storms are tearing through our communities like never before.

Scientists tell us we have 10 years left to dramatically reduce emissions. We have no room for meek half-measures wrapped up inside giant handouts to the fossil fuel industry.

We deserve a world without fossil fuels. A world in which workers and communities thrive and our shared climate comes before industry profits. Working together, I know we can make it happen. We have no time to waste.

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Dutch Officials Reveal Measures To Cut Emissions After Court Ruling

The Guardian - 

Green activists claim victory as government will spend €3bn on new climate initiatives

Marjan Minnesma with climate activists who were campaigning outside the Dutch Supreme Court last year during the case. Photograph: Ana Fernandez/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

The Dutch government has announced measures including huge cuts to coal use, garden greening and limits on livestock herds as part of its plan to lower emissions to comply with a supreme court ruling.

Climate litigation activists described the move as “an enormous win”.

The small non-profit Urgenda Foundation, which filed the initial legal challenge in 2013, said this and earlier compliance measures totalled about €3bn euros, which confirms the impact of the world’s most successful climate lawsuit to date.

Under the new package, coal-fired power stations will have to scale back or close completely, cattle and pig herds will be reduced, subsidies will be provided to home owners to use less concrete and more plants in their gardens, and industry will have to find alternatives for several polluting processes.

“That is an enormous win,” said Marjan Minnesma, the director of Urgenda, which has 15-staff and operates out of two former school classrooms. “For many people this will give hope that it is possible to use the law as a strategic instrument for change.”

After a seven-year legal battle, the supreme court in the Hague ordered the government in December to reduce emissions by 15 megatonnes in 2020.

The judges accepted Urgenda’s argument that climate change posed a dangerous threat to human rights and the Netherlands needed to accelerate its actions to meet its international commitment of a 25% cut compared with 1990.

To comply, the government has adopted 30 of the proposals in Urgenda’s “54 Climate Solutions Plan”, which was drawn up in collaboration with 800 civil society groups and other organisations.

The headline change is a 75% reduction in capacity at the country’s three coal-fired power stations, all of which have been opened in the past five years. The government is also reportedly in negotiations to close one of these plants.

In addition, it will provide about €400m for household energy saving measures such as double glazing, €360m to compensate farmers for livestock reductions, and €30m for LED lighting in greenhouses.

Along with earlier steps – including lower speed limits to control emissions of nitrogen dioxide, €2bn for rooftop solar and other forms of renewable energy, solar panels on all school rooftops, more sustainable forestry and changes in the use of concrete, the measures are expected to save 8 megatonnes of emissions this year and provide extra benefits in terms of air quality and wildlife habitat.

Minnesma said this should be seen as a “promising start” because the government is still about 4 megatonnes short of its obligations. She said the coronavirus lockdown should not be used as an excuse to backpedal.

The package was presented to parliament on Friday afternoon. The government said the measures would provide an economic stimulus and also help to reduce nitrogen pollution, which has been the subject of other legal actions.

MPs said the package should inspire activists across the world to pursue litigation against governments that drag their feet.

“Without a doubt this should encourage climate lawsuits in other countries. It’s a shining example,” said Green party politician Tom van der Lee. “This package wouldn’t be there without an order from the highest court. Without that verdict, the government would have chosen a slower trajectory.”

The environmental law charity ClientEarth said the result was unprecedented in Europe and testament to the impact of climate litigation, which is spreading around the world. “The Urgenda case should be considered a groundbreaking success, not just legally, but for driving real world action on climate change,” Sophie Marjanac, a ClientEarth lawyer.

The Dutch legal system’s ease of access and political independence of judges helped to make the case possible. If Urgenda had lost, they would only have had to pay €18,000 rather than the government’s extensive costs.

The Urgenda case has been closely watched around the world. While climate activists have welcomed the outcome, they urge the Netherlands to raise ambition beyond 2020 compliance with the orders of the supreme court.

“The Netherlands now needs to lay out a strategy to reach net zero by around the middle of this century,” said Bob Ward, policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

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