Early insights paper warns of climate impacts for Murray-Darling Basin

Authority chairman Angus Houston said it shared current thinking on some of the basin’s most complex challenges.

“It is part of our commitment to share the issues we are grappling with,” Mr Houston said.

The Basin Plan Evaluation, to be released in mid-2025, will provide an assessment of basin plan implementation, its impact and its effectiveness to date.

This will form the basis for the 2026 Basin Plan Review.

The authority has promised engagement through social media, email, a phone contact number, the website and a newsletter.

No face-to-face meetings were promised.

The early insights paper outlined how climate change may affect the basin’s future.

“The basin is warming because of global climate change,’’ the report said.

“This will continue to have environmental, economic, social and cultural consequences for basin communities.

“There is uncertainty in how, where, and when climate change will impact rainfall and runoff.

“However, we expect that the southern basin will have an underlying trend of declining water availability in the long term.

“We may already be experiencing this.

“Twelve of our driest years occurred in the River Murray system between 1900 and 1997. The next 12 were experienced in the 22 years between 1998 and 2020.”

The report said the southern basin might become much drier or maintain its historical state, but was unlikely to become wetter.

“Climate science cannot predict the exact future we will have. However, it helps us understand the risks to basin management outcomes.

“It can inform where action may be required now and where we need to be prepared in the future.”

The report warned of adverse impacts on basin employment and economic activities, particularly in the agriculture and tourism industries, due to rising temperatures and increased extractive water demand, coupled with increased variability and reductions in water availability, reliability and quality.

National Irrigators’ Council chief executive officer Zara Lowien said the paper was a stark contrast to the department’s just add water approach, acknowledging they need to move past volumes of water and focus on environmental outcomes because there are no interventions and no amount of water recovery that will avoid the apocalyptic, fake images from the Federal Government’s advertising campaign.

“We see this paper as a vital step towards informing decisions to enable more effective management of water resources across the Murray-Darling Basin,” Ms Lowien said.

“It sets the stage for collaborative efforts to optimise the use of environmental water and to achieve lasting benefits for communities, agriculture and the environment.

“We cannot continue to ignore non-water interventions.

“This paper provides a foundation to embrace the policy change and hopefully the funding needed to bring about on-ground, practical environmental outcomes.”