The idea of a community driven plan for the River is a good one.

Alastair and I would love your thoughts.

“I attended the Murray-Darling Basin Authority meeting at Goolwa on Feb 2^nd and it was a total and utter waste of time. Scheduled to last for only two hours, it wasted the first forty five minutes on total trivia – nothing of substance was produced. I left.

The crisis that is the MDB needs action now. The River Murray is rapidly dying from its mouth upwards and twenty of the Basin’s twenty three rivers are listed as being in poor or very poor health. The time for endless consultation, discussion, review and debate is long gone. There is a wartime-like urgency for the MDBA to show leadership and take immediate action to address the long term causes of this crisis – gross over extraction of the Basin’s water, colossal losses associated with 13,000 kms of open channels, outdated, inefficient irrigation practices and dysfunctional/ non existent metering.

But the MDBA does nothing; its priorities are all wrong. It ignores these urgent causes and instead busies itself with trivial ‘community’ meetings that have all the urgency and relevance of a senior citizen’s tea party. It hides behind an endless, comatose bureaucratic process and puts its faith in a ‘Basin Plan’, a de facto code for continuing delay. A convenient escape clause that allows the authority to continue to avoid the hard decisions that are decades overdue. As a distraction, it puts forward obscure projects that address obscure problems and the Rudd government throws vast amounts of money at them, hoping they will go away. But they don’t and large portions of this money disappear into the black hole of bureaucracy, leaving little for the rivers.

The cold reality facing the Basin Plan is that it will be subjected to the same labyrinthine bureaucratic process and years will pass before actual results appear along our rivers, likely to be as late as 2014. These are critical years that our rivers cannot afford to lose.

And the reason for this appalling 40 yr paralysis?

Political parties operate entirely through a prism of self-interest. The Rudd government is paranoid that the solutions required will prove so unpopular they will be unelectable for a decade. So they put their narrow interests first, and nothing is done.

And the answer?

The communities of the Basin must bypass the politicians and bureaucrats and seize the initiative. They must become leaders and visionaries and take control of the Basin’s problems, leaving the politicians follow in their wake.

To do this they must produce a simple plan of action that can be adopted Basin-wide. When it has sufficient support, it should be taken to Canberra. If both major parties approved, the longstanding political paralysis and odium that has prevented progress for 40 years would be removed. Politicians would be relieved from the onerous task of finding solutions to the Basin’s problems. And the communities, the people who know the most about the rivers, would be free to forge ahead with their own remedies.”

Written by Alastair Wood, 8 February 2010

The reason we have a political process is to try to balance all of this information and all of these needs. You will never be able to model it perfectly and come up with THE right answer. We live in a political system where all ideas are contestable, even ideas based on very sound science. This is a good thing. Whenever communities have vested all knowledge and power in a few people – disaster has always ensued.

If scientists want to be influential in this world, they must be:

1. Very honest about what the science says. As we can see from the climate change debate, it does not help the cause of putting across a credible message on science when the results are exaggerated to try and build support for a particular cause. Let the truth tell its own story. In the end civilisations rise and fall on the political process. There is not much you can do to change that. Go along for the ride.

2. Very vocal about what the science says, but more circumspect about what the response should be. Scientists can appear arrogant when they presume that they know the right response. It is important to suggest policy responses and explain what you think the implications are of different approaches, but stick to your knitting and talk about what you know about most of all – the science.

3. Tell your story. People love stories, which is why singing contests, sport, soap operas and crime shows are more popular than shows about science. If you want to reach more people, put a story around what you are trying to say. Corey’s blog-post on  how frogs were disappearing because of the global appetite for frogs legs went viral because it was a interesting story. And the science message got out as a result. Some scientists  complain to me that this is “spin”. True, but not in the sense that you are trying to deceive someone, just that you are trying to get them interested. You are showing respect to your audience by “spinning” the message in an interesting way.

4. I need to hear it at least seven times before I’ve heard it. Putting out one media release, or one article or one presentation and thinking that you’ve done the job of communicating is delusional. Good communicators get their message out lots of times in lots of different ways. When your audience has heard the message so many times they are getting sick of it, (think Kevin Rudd and “working families” or Tony Abbot and “great big Labor tax”) they have finally heard it.

5. Maintain patience and pressure. It is sometimes frustrating that no action occurs even when you think it is obvious that it should. Don’t burn your bridges by taking it out on policy makers in government. You may need to work with them for many years to come, and they are likely to get more powerful over time, not less.  But on the other hand, don’t let up the pressure. Maintain a professional tone to your discussions and presentations in the media. In the end, you will mostly be respected if you keep telling the story about the science. And policy makers can be just as frustrated as you about the lack of action as you are, even if they are not allowed to show it.

I’ll finish this post with a quote from Machievelli, one of the great thinkers on political science, said that “… nothing is more difficult than to introduce a new order. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new…”

True

Written by Paul Dalby on 2 February 2010

Written by Paul Dalby on 19 October 2009

54% of Australia’s total land area was managed by agricultural businesses – Tasmania the smallest  (23%)  Queensland the largest (82%). Grazing land accounted for 87% of land managed by agricultural businesses, 8% for cropping and 2% was set aside for conservation.

The most common land management practices undertaken were surface water management (74%), application of fertiliser (62%) and monitoring ground cover in paddocks (54%).

66% of all agricultural businesses reported having native vegetation on their properties, more than half reported rivers or creeks and wetlands were reported by 10% of all agricultural businesses. About half of all agricultural businesses that had such ecological assets on their property reported that they were protecting them.

Nationally 17 million hectares was prepared using zero-till compared with 9 million hectares prepared using one or more cultivation passes. Of all agricultural businesses managing crop residue, the main crop residue management practices undertaken were to leave stubble intact (43%), removal of crop residue by baling or heavy grazing (34%) and ploughing crop residue into the soil (33%). These management practices were used on 90% of all land managed for crop residue in 2007-08.

Of agricultural businesses grazing livestock on crops or pasture, 69% monitor the amount of ground cover in paddocks and 57% of these have established a minimum ground cover level target. By far the most common method undertaken by agricultural businesses for monitoring ground cover was visual estimates, with 96% reporting using this method. This proportion was generally reflected in all states except the Northern Territory where 17% reported using photo monitoring standards (comparison with photos of known ground cover levels) to monitor ground cover.

Is the glass half full or half empty?

On the one hand, this survey does suggest the billions of dollars spent on natural resource management and engagement of farmers in conservation has has an impact, but there are still half of all agricultural businesses in Australia who do not see that protecting ecological assets is part of their business and a similar proportion who are leaving their soils at risk to erosion. While I could not find a comparable earlier survey by the ABS, when I think back to the 1980′s, this survey suggests that there has been a major shift towards improvements in agricultural land management practices. However, there is still plenty of room for improvement. Failure to protect natural resources now such as soil, native vegetation and water will disadvantage the ability of future generations to enjoy the productive benefits of Australia’s agricultural lands.

Do we need to invent a “Landcare” for the 21st Century that picks up the other 50% of landholders and taps into the latest in science and technology? Is the current dry period across southern Australia an impediment to change, or a catalyst?

Written by Paul Dalby on 12 June 2009