11/03/2021

(AU) The Single Most Important Resource Underpinning Australia’s Food Security Is Under Threat

Sydney Morning Herald - Angus Houston

Author
Sir Angus Houston is the chair of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. 
I’ve spent the past six months out in the Murray-Darling Basin, listening and learning. During my latest trip – to central and northern NSW – I was struck deeply by the great uncertainty many people are feeling about the future after experiencing the hottest and driest three years on record. 

At the iconic internationally recognised Macquarie Marshes I saw firsthand how dryland vegetation has encroached upon the marshes – a small but significant sign (no doubt replicated in other parts of Australia) that illustrates that our drier and hotter climate is quickly changing our landscapes, communities and industries.

The Darling River at Louth, in far west NSW, in February last year. Credit: Jenny Evans/Getty Images

While the grass may be a little greener now, it temporarily masks a growing genuine concern about the future. What will the next season hold, and the one after that? What does that mean for the younger generations the future of these communities which people quite rightly feel a responsibility to protect. I have seen firsthand how climate and water shortages are a significant threat to the security of our communities.

Climate change acts as a threat-multiplier. More frequent droughts and natural disasters increase pressure on resources, communities, institutions and infrastructure. It can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities within societies, and have a destabilising effect, worsening the factors that generate conflict and social unrest.

Even stable and wealthy nations like ours are exposed. Only 18 months ago, communities in the northern basin were carting drinking water because dams had run dry.


US President Joe Biden signed a raft of executive actions to combat climate change, including pausing new oil and gas leases on federal land and cutting fossil fuel subsidies, as he pursues clean energy policies he billed as a boon to the economy.

Our prosperity and way of life are dependent on our nation’s water and food security. And the Murray-Darling Basin is the single most important resource underpinning this security.

Last year – through the 2020 Basin Plan Evaluation – we shared a range of future climate scenarios the basin could face developed by the CSIRO. The most probable scenario is that average annual streamflow in 30 years’ time will be up to 30 per cent less than what we see today, due to a 10 per cent reduction in rainfall. We released these climate scenarios alongside a commitment to support the basin in adapting to climate challenges and increasing resilience.

Adapting to a challenge of the magnitude of climate change can seem overwhelming, paralysing. But I believe that as a nation, Australia is strong enough and smart enough to rise to the challenge. Many are already doing just that.

Australia faces ‘constellation’ of diplomatic pressures over climate.

There are plenty of conversations happening at kitchen tables and board room tables about this challenge and what communities and industries are already doing to adapt.

Whether you call it climate change, or just changing weather patterns, it’s clear that now more than ever we all have to lean in and learn – from other communities, industry groups or governments – so together we’re tackling this complex challenge of water scarcity and hotter temperatures from all angles.

The good news is that we have numerous leaders, industries and groups charging ahead with their adaptation efforts. They are rightly proud of the work they’re doing and the progress they’re making to adapt to a drier and hotter climate.

We are bringing together these leaders from agriculture, natural resource management, tourism, finance, support services and government as part of our Basin Climate Resilience Summit, which starts on Thursday in Canberra.

The MDBA does not have all the answers. Our role is to take a basin-wide view and do what we can to supercharge the climate adaptation efforts already underway. The summit is the beginning of this journey and poses three questions. What are the key focus areas we need to consider for the basin? What impediments or lessons do we need to navigate? What are the opportunities to collaborate, and if so how?

It’s hoped the summit will contribute to the collective preparedness of all in the basin. We will ensure all interested parties are kept informed as we continue to work together so our basin communities can survive and thrive sustainably.

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(AU) Morrison Locks In ‘Lower Emissions’ Energy

 AFR - Jacob Greber

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has explicitly endorsed the growing need for additional lower carbon energy supply as his government prepares for what he called the “new geopolitics of energy and climate change”.

As business and investors called for a more rapid shift to renewable energy, Mr Morrison told The Australian Financial Review Business Summit that his government was responding to epoch-making changes in the way energy is produced, transported and consumed.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks at the 2021 AFR Business Summit.

Mr Morrison has long promoted the need for “affordable and reliable” power, but on Tuesday pointedly added “lower emissions” energy to his list of must-haves.

“The world’s response to climate change is simultaneously reshaping the global economy, global politics and the global energy system.”

“We are preparing. Australia is preparing. The Australian government is preparing for this new geo-politics of energy and climate change. It’s gone into another gear.”

“We must address the threats, and we must realise the opportunities for Australia.”

The comments come ahead of a busy year on global climate change policy, where Mr Morrison will appear at a number of major summits leading up to the United Nations Glasgow meeting in November.

Coal-rich Australia has been accused of falling behind the world’s leading economies on climate action, putting pressure on Mr Morrison to lift the country’s level of ambition towards net zero emissions by 2050.

Fortescue Metals chief executive Elizabeth Gaines said later during the summit that investors were putting a “strong focus” on climate change action.

“We will need to see a much more rapid transition to renewable energy in all its forms,” Ms Gaines said.

Ms Gaines added that European investors were ahead of many others in the need for a more rapid shift to renewables.

“It’s quite interesting because we actually see a different focus here in Australia than the investors we’re talking to offshore,” she said.

“There is going to be an acceleration of a transition to renewable energy.”

“A lot of governments and whole industries have committed to net zero emissions by 2050.

“But if we want to align with the Paris Agreement, 2050 will be too late.”

David Solomon, the Goldman Sachs chief executive, indicated strong support for a carbon tax, saying it was something that the world needs to “make progress as a society“.

He rejected the idea that financial institutions such as his own were sweating on the need for a carbon price as a way to make money, saying it was about ensuring capital isn’t wasted.

“It’s centred on finding ways that we can get capital allocated to places where the technology or the investment that’s being made is medium- and long-term.”

Mr Morrison encouraged the Summit’s business leaders to read US author Daniel Yergin’s latest book, published late last year – The New Map – which maps out how climate change policy is shaking up technology, infrastructure and even relations between nations.

“[Yergin] said our response to climate change will ‘bring continuing changes in how energy is produced, transported and consumed; in strategies and investment; in technologies and infrastructure; and in relations between countries’.”

“Very true,” Mr Morrison said.

Mohamed El-Erian told attendees that the private sector is moving ahead of governments.

“Any company that doesn’t get on board risks being left behind in a serious fashion,” he said. “It will tun faster than what governments are trying to do.”

Dr El-Erian, the Allianz chief economic adviser, says governments will find themselves “pushing on an open door” when they catch up.

Striking a note of caution, former Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris, said the new Biden administration could fail if it veers “too far left” on issues such as climate change.

Mr Liveris agreed that a carbon pricing system was inevitable.

But he also suggests safe nuclear energy should be on the agenda in the US and Australia.

Mr Liveris added that there was a need for more large-scale batteries, not just ones that can power states for up to five hours.

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Humans Have 'Destroyed Or Degraded' Two-Thirds Of The World's Original Tropical Rainforests

SBS - Reuters

Logging and land conversion for agriculture has wiped out 34 per cent of the world's original old-growth tropical rainforests and degraded another 30 per cent, leaving them more vulnerable to fire and future destruction.

The sun sets as smoke from illegal fires lingers, in Para state, Brazil last year. Source: AFP

Humans have degraded or destroyed roughly two-thirds of the world's original tropical rainforest cover, new data reveals, raising alarm that a key natural buffer against climate change is quickly vanishing. The forest loss is also a major contributor of climate-warming emissions, with the dense tropical forest vegetation representing the largest living reservoir of carbon.

Logging and land conversion, mainly for agriculture, have wiped out 34 per cent of the world's original old-growth tropical rainforests, and degraded another 30 per cent leaving them more vulnerable to fire and future destruction, according to an analysis by the non-profit Rainforest Foundation Norway.

More than half of the destruction since 2002 has been in South America's Amazon and bordering rainforests. As more rainforest is destroyed, there is more potential for climate change, which in turn makes it more difficult for remaining forests to survive, said the report's author Anders Krogh, a tropical forest researcher.

"It's a terrifying cycle," Mr Krogh said. The total lost between just 2002 and 2019 was larger than the area of France, he found.

The rate of loss in 2019 roughly matched the annual level of destruction over the last 20 years, with a football field's worth of forest vanishing every 6 seconds, according to another recent report by the World Resources Institute.


Two-thirds of tropical rainforest destroyed or degraded globally, NGO says

The Brazilian Amazon has been under intense pressure in recent decades, as an agricultural boom has driven farmers and land speculators to torch plots of land for soybeans, beef and other crops. That trend has worsened since 2019, when right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro took office and began weakening environmental enforcement.

But the Amazon also represents the best hope for preserving what rainforest remains. The Amazon and its neighbors – the Orinoco and the Andean rainforest – account for 73.5 per cent of tropical forests still intact, according to Mr Krogh.

More than 13,000sq km of Brazilian rainforest burned last year. NurPhoto

The new report "reinforces that Brazil must take care of the forest," said Ane Alencar, a geographer with the Amazon Environmental Research Institute who was not involved in the work. "Brazil has the biggest chunk of tropical forest in the world and is also losing the most."

Southeast Asian islands, mostly belonging to Indonesia, collectively rank second in terms of forest destruction since 2002, with much of those forests cleared for palm oil plantations.

Central Africa ranks third, with most of the destruction centered around the Congo River basin, due to traditional and commercial farming as well as logging.

Forests that were defined in the report as degraded had either been partially destroyed, or destroyed and since replaced by secondary forest growth, Rainforest Foundation Norway said.

An aerial view shows a tract of Amazon jungle burning as it is cleared by farmers in Itaituba, Para, Brazil September 26, 2019. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes/File Photo
That report's definition for intact forest may be overly strict, cautioned Tasso Azevedo, coordinator of the Brazilian deforestation mapping initiative MapBiomas. The analysis only counts untouched regions of at least 500 square kilometres as intact, leaving out smaller areas that may add to the world's virgin forest cover, he said.

Mr Krogh explained that this definition was chosen because smaller tracts are at risk of the "edge effect," where trees die faster and biodiversity is harder to maintain near the edge of the forest. A forest spanning 500 square kilometres can fully sustain its ecosystem, he said.

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