Trouble Down Under

Circle of Blue, an international global water crisis network, recently released a comprehensive report on southeast Australia's 12-year drought, which it calls The Biggest Dry. While a drought overtly seems to just communicate a lack of water, the report highlights the wide range of ramifications a drought of this magnitude actually has. Record-breaking wildfires, wetland disappearance, sulfuric acid generation and subsequent ecosystem poisoning, forest death, crop failure, and urban abandonment are all direct results of this devastating drought.

In this vein, The Big Dry is materializing into a concrete example of a global ecological security issue. According to Circle of Blue, last year’s sky-high food prices that caused food riots in poor nations resulted in part from the failure of Australia’s one-million-ton rice crop because of the drought. Within Australia, the drought is posing a multi-front challenge consisting of elements of conflict, governance, environment, and welfare: it is “damaging the nation’s ability to feed itself, producing lasting changes on the land, pushing people out of their homes, aggravating long-simmering tensions between the government and Australia’s indigenous people, and causing mass extinctions.”

Thus, according to Circle of Blue, The Big Dry stands as the first test of an industrialized nation contending with “the severe consequences of drought and climate change,” though it poignantly notes that it “won’t be the last.” If you’re looking for an early instance of government confronting an impending global trend, southeastern Australia’s drought is a prime example. I’m certainly going to be keeping my eye on it.