Christian Kerr writes:

“Finding a flow for all” is the theme of a water conference to be held
at Parliament House tomorrow. “For the first time in world history, demand for
water for non-agricultural uses is growing more rapidly than it is for
agricultural purposes, and the competition for water is likely to be at the
expense of irrigation,” the organisers say. “Yet there are billions who depend
on irrigated agriculture.”

It’s got a good line-up, including Foreign Minister Alexander Downer
and the Parliamentary Secretary to the PM, Malcolm Turnbull.

Turnbull’s fired off a few shots of his own in the water wars today,
launching a book published by the Centre for Independent Studies entitled All the Water in the World, by American Enterprise Institute Fellow
Roger Bates.

Unsurprisingly, it says water trading can fix many water woes. “The UN
claims that by 2025, 2.7 billion people will face severe water shortages,”
Bates says. “The prime reason for such expected shortages is mismanagement of
water resources… Water is often underpriced, leading to wastage and poor
conservation, and even on the rare occasions when government planners have
increased water prices to a best estimate of efficient levels, they have proved
incapable of tracking changing demand. The resulting inflexibility means that
water is inevitably wasted, especially in the agricultural sector, which uses
most of the world’s fresh water. An indirect result is that hundreds of millions
of people are without access to clean water.”

Australia’s National
Water Initiative, as Turnbull reminds us, is market driven. Water markets
promote more rational development and usage of resources, the thinking goes,
and therefore have smaller environmental impacts. They introduce flexibility,
reduce waste and allow fairer distribution. Indeed, by encouraging better use
of existing resources, they can save money by removing the need for expensive
further water infrastructure.

Bates says Australia has created
“the most sophisticated trading regime in the world,” one that has “already
reaped dividends, both economically and environmentally”.

Who’ll return fire tomorrow in the water wars?