driest inhabited continent.

I thought a good follow on from my previous blog would be to look at the driest inhabited continent on Earth as opposed to the region experiencing the most widespread water scarcity... take a guess!!

yes you guessed right.. Australia! There is a presumption, not by everyone of course but some people that developed countries do not experience water scarcity as such. 

Australia is proof that yes developed countries do experience water shortages, but it is perhaps their greater ability to deal with the issue that keeps the issue more under wraps in contrast to developing regions like Africa for example. Nevertheless water availability is a major issue in Australia, particularly as rainfall varies a lot seasonally, yearly and across the continent (Chhartisgarh, 2008).

The more populated temperate south of Australia is where there are the worst water scarcity problems,  whereas in the tropical north where few people live there is a relative abundance of water(Charters and William , 2006)- as we can see distribution is a reoccuring topic!

The larger population in the urban areas together with the heavy industry and water intensive agro business (Murray Darling Basin - 75% of irrigated agriculture- which has caused major water depletion here) in the south is causing irreversible damage to the frail ecosystems and contributing to this  chronic water shortages(sustainability, 2014). However it is the prevailing drought conditions  conditioned by global warming that are mostly determining this water usage as unsustainable. For the past 9 years Australia has been experiencing perhaps the worst drought of their history ( and they have had no shortages of these).

The finding published in the journal Nature, say that increases in greenhouse gases and ozone( Australia is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases per capita) in the Earth's atmosphere are responsible for suppressing rainfall in Australia (Zeng and Delworth, 2014). In addition climate change is expressing itself both magnitude and variability on the highly variable cyclic pattern of rainfall (William and Charters, 2006) it is no wonder it is expressing its worst drought. 

Climate change projections show a tendency for  decrease in winter -spring rainfall ( June - November) over the southern half of the continent and a tendency for increased summer autumn rainfall ( December - May)  in northern Australia (William and charter, 2006), which means the current situation in southern Australia is going to get even worse. 

In response to this the western Australian minister for water and forestry Mia Davies said, 

"In a drying climate we need to become less reliant on rainfall, which is why we go down the path of desalination, around waste water treatment and reuse and re- injection into our aquifers,"(Mercer, 2014). These both are already being utilised in Australia.

                             

 However the issue here is that these energy intensive ways of getting water are going to contribute to the issue of global warming even more so which in turn will create more water problems for Australia. Therefore in addition to these energy intensive ways Australia has put an increase of emphasis in water conservation and various regimes restricting the use of water(William and Charters, 2006). 

In conclusion Australia is suffering from a different water scarcity  problem to Sub Saharan African given the development difference. While Sub Saharan Africa is mainly suffering from economic scarcity the prevailing issue in Australia is physical scarcity and the dominant reason being climate change exarcebating the drought. However human transformations (especially through river regulation and irrigation) have intensified the extent of the drought. How successfully Australia responds to these current water scarcity issues will offer an important road map for others around the world.