WARWICK Lorenz of Australian Pump Industries urges readers to be aware of the looming climate crisis and for the government to prioritise action for the sustainable future.
In Australia we see the effects of climate change everyday on the news and at home.
We know we should be preparing for future chaos with flood mitigation programs and beefing up our bushfire fighting education and capability levels.
However, there is an even more dire crisis coming that was aired at COP23.
This extremely important meeting in Dubai in January showed clearly that the world is in real trouble.
Extreme heatwaves, lack of rain and unprecedented wildfires devastated up to a third of cultivatable land in Russia, the world's fourth largest grain exporter.
At the same time severe droughts in China and Ukraine contributed to a global wheat shortage having a dramatic effect on countries dependent on wheat imports like the Middle East and North Africa.
Going back a little further, 2022 saw an extended 50°C heatwave in South Asia that jeopardised India’s wheat supply as crops died in the dry heat.
As a result, India banned wheat exports.
To summarise, projections by Chatham House 2021, Climate Risk Assessment found that by 2040, just 16 years from now, the average proportion of global cropland affected by severe drought (less than 50 per cent normal yield) will rise to 32 per cent a year, more than 3 times the historic average.
By 2050 this is projected to rise to almost 40 per cent.
World population growth....the challenge
At the end of the second world war the population was 3 billion.
Not only is it rising but the rate of increase is accelerating.
In first world, western countries it is largely dropping however third world countries are seeing major population growth.
By coincidence those same countries are the chief victims of climate change.
62 per cent of employment in Africa is based on food production, either cropping or livestock.
Climate change will drive down food production in these countries, further decreasing their ability to feed people.
The population is projected to reach almost 10 billion within the next 25 years.
How to feed the masses in the face of climate change?
That’s the challenge.
With millions of people already suffering from food deprivation, in one form or another, you can see that Australia has a part to play.
Food systems....their vulnerability
A third of the world’s food production is at risk from the climate crisis.
At the same time, our food systems are one of the key contributors to climate breakdown.
Greenhouse gas emissions from farm and "land use change" often contribute to that breakdown.
Clearing forest and drying wetlands to make room for crops and livestock, make up more than a fifth of the global carbon output. (source Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
In others words, the world's food systems are exceptionally vulnerable and yet, they need to grow more to feed the inevitable world population explosion.
To quote an old saying “something’s got to give!”
Demand for food and climate change
Global food demand is tipped to be up 50 per cent by the year 2050.
Over that time the impacts of climate change on the capacity to feed the global population are projected to increase 20 per cent over three decades.
This will have a profoundly negative impact on food, human and global security.
Here’s what the COP found:
1. Impacts are likely to be locked in for the period 2040 to 2050 unless something is done about reducing the climate change that is driving the extreme weather events.
2. The average global cropland affected by severe drought will likely rise by 32 per cent per year (where severe drought is defined as a greater than 50 per cent yield reduction).
3. By 2040 almost 700 million people a year will likely be exposed to drought of at least six months duration, nearly doubling global historic annual averages.
So we will see the cascading global impact drive political instability and greater national insecurity.
This will fuel regional and international conflict.
Australia, what can we do?
The problems outlined above must be faced and dealt with.
Governments that are in power for three years at a time, will ignore them and we are seeing that every day.
It’ll take education and some real passion to make Australians face the fact that we are sitting on a huge island continent that could produce three times more food than it does, if only we had water security in the inland.
The majority of us, live in four cities and we know the inland, by world standards, is empty.
There are some lessons to learn in developing land by providing water security.
One is the way innovative foreign companies are building irrigation channels to move the surplus water from the Ord Dam.
Previously low grade beef cattle grazing country is now good cropping land, with huge potential for food production for the starving nations of the world.
The Ord Dam is a classic example of an underused and underdeveloped resource.
We could divert the millions of litres of surplus water, that currently flow into the sea every day, just like Hammurabi, the King of Babylon, did 3750 years ago.
“We dug channels in the desert and bought water to the land and it flourished.
"The people were happy,” he tells us.
Solutions
1. Governments should win our votes based on their actions rather than procrastination.
2. An education program needs to be rolled out that tells the people, of this wonderful country, what is actually going on with climate change.
Every home needs to understand that ultimately due to population growth, and dropping food production the looming food shortage will get worse.
The instability caused could change everything that we hold dear.
Here at Aussie Pumps we do the best we can by building big flood lifters.
You’ve seen the story about how we saved the town of Juba from flooding, in South Sudan, by redirecting the Nile River.
It sounds incredible but the United Nations did it with 23 of these MQ600TDs.
So far as controlling fires is concerned there are bright spots.
We are seeing people like Centric developing sophisticated gear for fast filling aircraft with fire retardant.
Remote, hard to reach fires can be put out faster without endangering our brave firefighters.
That’s a very positive thing.
Is there more we can do?
Yes.
You can’t fight fire without water.
Having more water resources is essential.
We have the capability, and yet we are still waiting for somebody to have the guts to put an extra 15 metres on the Warragamba Dam.
Sydney is heading for a population of seven million people and they all consume water.
We hope you get just as mad as we are.
We’d love to hear your ideas, regardless of how preposterous, on how to drought proof Australia, grow more food, and fight bushfires, even if it means changing the direction of the Darling River.
We are looking for fellow believers.