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WATER, POPULATION AND AUSTRALIA'S URBAN FUTURE - 2007 FENNER CONFERENCE ON THE ENVIRONMENT
3 April 2007

Sustainable stewardship of water supplies for Australian communities was the main focus of the 2007 Fenner Conference on Water, Population and Australia's Urban Future, organised by the nation's peak science body, the Australian Academy of Science. Participants included people working with the public on water-waste issues - mayors, councillors and other key local figures - as well as experts in related scientific research, business, water usage, irrigation and government.

The conference examined the critical and increasingly shaky relationship between water and population in shaping Australia's urban areas and the ever-expanding suburban fringe. Participants were keen to demonstrate how local responsibilities and action with creative solutions could become drivers for national water policy and water management.

The keynote speaker, internationally-renowned climate change and sustainability expert and Academy Fellow Dr Graeme Pearman, turned the spotlight on our future prospects for living in a dry climate saying: 'It is a growing movement that says that we in fact are so good at managing things that we don't have to rely on any consideration of physical reality'.

Professor John Langford of Uniwater, a joint venture of the University of Melbourne and Monash University, presented the talk 'The Murray-Darling Basin: Down the drain or a vision splendid' in which he said: 'If the autumn/winter of 2007 is dry, Australia will be in a critical position.for the first time in our history all the irrigation storages are at critically low levels.If short term political influence results in over-allocation of water, it is like printing money in a time of inflation: all they are doing is degrading the security of all the other irrigators' entitlements.'

Dr John Williams, Commissioner of the Natural Resources Commission of New South Wales gave the example of the possibility of huge changes to land use planning, decisions and regulations especially in terms of addressing how such population growth needs water. He explained that here, we need to reverse the practice of the last century, where we allocated development and then asked the engineers to provide the water.

Professor Kurt Lambeck, President of the Australian Academy of Science, concluded that 'it is perhaps a thought that the drought and flood cycles are very much part of the Australian scene, but with the superimposition of long-term climate trends the period between extreme cycles will probably shorten. There is the potential that politicians and policy makers will only pay attention to these issues once the two cycles - the political cycle and the climate and drought cycle - begin to have similar time constants.'