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Gardens and water management
Billy wrote:
In article , "David Hare-Scott" wrote: Billy wrote: David, you still going to be able to grow a garden, after the Americans buy up your water rights? Yes "Australia has privatized its water totally, and basically itıs now for sale. And thereıs a big American investment firm thatıs actually buying up water rights. It was supposed to be, originally, just to get the farmers of the big farm conglomerates to share, to trade, but now itıs all gone private and international, so theyıre hardly going to support something that says that water, is a human right, when theyıve commodified it and said itıs a market commodity." http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2...declares_acces s This is a complex issue. The rights to the water that falls on the catchment to public water supplies is broadly not for sale, the Government holds onto that by excluding most of it from being a tradeable commodity. In a city/suburban situation you can do whatever you like with the water that falls on your property (and the grey water you generate provided you don't poison people with it) but you cannot sell it. In the rural situation (which is me) every property owner has a "harvestable right". Roughly speaking you can impound and use 10% of the water that falls on your land but not from permanent waterways. Additionally you can extract from permanent waterways an unlimited amount for no cost for "bona fide domestic purposes". So I could use that to grow whatever I like provided it is not a commercial venture, this last constraint does in practice limit how much you can extract. Neither of these rights are saleable. In addition I own a water licence which permits me to extract a specified amount of water from permanent waterways per annum for a fairly nominal cost. This licence is saleable but only applies to the specified catchment so it is not possible to buy up water licences and use them wherever you like. It is essential for proper long term water management for water to be given a genuine and realistic value at least in commercial quantities. In the past it was pretty much free in all circumstances. What do people do with a resource that is "free"? They over use it. I think you are familiar with the phrase "the tragedy of the commons". So we have the absurdities of growing rice and cotton in dryland areas by massive (and wasteful) irrigation and more water being allocated from the Murray-Darling than is actually available except in flood years. The sooner this water is given a sensible value the sooner this kind of abuse will be gone. As you can see the above quote is very misleading regarding the ownership of water in Australia. As for the motivation of the Gov to not want to vote for water as a basic right I have no clear idea but Oz does vote with America on many issues for reasons that may have nothing to do with the issue itself. David It does appear misleading. I can only hope that they are wrong about the following as well. http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2...declares_acces s At the global level, approximately one out of every eight people do not have drinking water. In just one day, more than 200 million hours of the time used by women is spent collecting and transporting water for their homes. The lack of sanitation is even worse, because it affects 2.6 billion people, which represents 40 percent of the global population. According to the report of the World Health Organization and of UNICEF of 2009, which is titled "Diarrhoea: Why Children Are [Still] Dying and What We Can Do," every day 24,000 children die in developing countries due to causes that can be prevented, such as diarrhea, which is caused by contaminated water. This means that a child dies every three-and-a-half seconds. . . Brand new World Bank study says that the (water) demand is going to exceed supply by 40 percent in twenty years. Itıs just a phenomenal statement. And the human suffering behind that is just unbelievable. And what this did was basically say that the United Nations has decided itıs not going to let huge populations leave them behind as this crisis unfolds, that the new priority is to be given to these populations without water and sanitation. I know less about this topic but I suspect that it is true. David |
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