A 'Sunburnt' Country Battles Drought

GRIFFITH, Australia — Like every farmer in this hardscrabble town, Joe Dalbroi watches the skies, hoping for clouds that will end the worst drought anyone here can remember.

But in this farm town of 25,000 a six-hour drive west of Sydney, pessimism runs deep. Last year, Dalbroi lost most of his crop. This year there has been almost no rain. He will be lucky to break even.

"We've had droughts before, but this time there's no light at the end of the tunnel," he says. "You can't grow crops without water. It's as simple as that."

Australia has always experienced cycles of dry and wet weather, some lasting many years. But growing scientific consensus argues that global warming — the slow heating of the planet as nations spew billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere — will increase the intensity and length of droughts worldwide.

The United States also may already be suffering worse droughts because of global warming. An ongoing drought in the southeastern United States has caused rivers in Georgia, North Carolina and Alabama to fall to levels not seen in a century.

In Georgia, metro Atlanta's main water source, Lake Lanier, could drop to a historic low by the end of the year. State officials say metro Atlanta's water supplies could be jeopardized as early as January.

In Florida, Lake Okeechobee shrank to an all-time low in July, causing $100 million in agricultural loses.

In Texas, an almost two-year drought that ended this year cost more than $4 billion in lost crops and livestock, one of the worst economic disasters in the state's history.

All three droughts were intensified by global warming and are part of a long-term drying trend over much of the American South, said Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Scientists recently recorded five consecutive years of below-average flows for the first time on the Colorado River, a major water source for seven states.

Globally, the world's land area suffering from extreme drought could rise from less than 3 percent to 30 percent by the end of the century, according to an April report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an effort coordinated by the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization.

The future is now for Dalbroi as southeastern Australia is gripped by the worst drought in its recorded history.

His fields are full of yellowed pumpkin vines, scrawny carrots and withered wheat. Dust kicks up into tiny tornadoes as he talks about better times: How his grandfather moved here from Italy in 1925 and built a good life. How he also became a farmer and profited enough to build a comfortable farmhouse and put two daughters through college.

The Murray-Darling Basin — an area three times larger than California that produces 40 percent of Australia's agriculture — has received below-average rainfall for more than six years. Last year, both rainfall and the level of the Murray River, Australia's second-longest waterway, fell to record lows.

Australia is the world's driest inhabited continent and the impact of global warming on drought arguably is clearer here than anywhere else on Earth.

"We tend to think of Australia as a canary in the climate change coal mine," said Ken Matthews, chairman of Australia's National Water Commission. "It's an early warning about what might happen in other countries."

A SUNBURNT COUNTRY

Australia's best-known poem eulogizes the nation as a "sunburnt country ... of droughts and flooding rains." But even Dorothea Mackellar, who wrote the lines after a 19th century drought, couldn't have imagined the hardships caused by Australia's current drought.

"Everyone here is tired. They're drained," said Margaret Brown, a vice president of the New South Wales Country Women's Association. "There's no sign of rain, there's no hope, and some people think there's just no point in going on."

The prospect of losing family farms to foreclosure has been particularly difficult. Garry Carlon, a rice farmer who lives next to Joe Dalbroi, is the fifth generation of his family to farm in Griffith.

"Farming is the only thing I know," he says, his eyes downcast. "I don't know what else I could do."

For Australia's cities, the problem has been financial. City residents have borne much of the burden of $3.1 billion in drought relief since 2001 and as reservoirs have run low, city governments have invested in expensive alternatives.

In southwestern Australia, where reservoir inflows have fallen by more than half since the 1950s, Perth is spending more than $1 billion on two desalination plants to make seawater drinkable. On the east coast, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne — Australia's largest cities — have so little water that they may restrict manufacturing and are considering recycling waste water for drinking, a plan some locals call "toilet-to-tap."

The environment has also suffered. Wildfires have become a threat and low river flows have decimated fish and bird populations. Several times in recent years, the Murray River has dried up before reaching the sea.

Australia's average temperature has risen 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950 and is expected to rise another 1.8 degrees by 2030 — increasing evaporation and stressing plants — according to a report released this month by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), the Australian government's chief think tank.

"There's been a very, very marked drying of the whole of east Australia," said Colin Chartres, until October the chief scientific adviser to Australia's National Water Commission. "Drought isn't new, but putting a climate change cycle on top of it will make things doubly hard."

ONE TOWN'S TALE

Griffith offers a parable about how water can build and destroy a community.

A surveyor passing through today's Griffith in 1817 complained of a "barren desolation of this country which wearies one more than I am able to express."

But after the government began irrigating the Murray-Darling Basin in 1912, Griffith thrived: In 1963, a local history called Griffith a "city of tomorrow" where visitors could witness a "magnificent kaleidoscope" of "vivid emerald green" grass and "bright yellow" rice.

Today signs of the drought are everywhere. Since water restrictions were imposed for the first time in the town's history, lawns have browned. In a downtown park, a waterwheel built in 1957 to commemorate "the irrigation water which has created beauty out of a desert" sits motionless, the small pool at its base bone dry.

The rice harvest in Griffith fell to one-tenth average yields last year and this year farmers haven't been given enough water to plant a crop. Citrus growers have been given water to keep their trees alive, but low allocations have meant small yields and many growers are selling their farms and moving away.

Because Griffith's economy relies on farm incomes, the drought has reverberated through its downtown businesses.

"At the end of the day, if we didn't have water, we wouldn't have Griffith," said Craig Tilston, president of the local chamber of commerce. "If farming dries up or stops then most of our economy dries up."

A NATIONAL WAR

Over the past decade, the Australian government has cut farm subsidies and forced farmers to pay for dam and canal maintenance. As a result, many farmers have installed drip irrigation to reduce water lost to evaporation.

In an effort to protect the environment, the government has also made water a tradable commodity.

Since canals were built in the Murray-Darling Basin in the early 20th century, farmers buying irrigated land also received a share of available water.

But with less water to distribute, the government has separated deeds for land and water and created an online market where farmers can sell their water rights to the highest bidder.

The plan allows farmers to cut their loses by selling seasonal rights in dry years when planting a crop would be risky or by selling out entirely if they leave farming.

Since the government finished phasing in the program last year, sales have moved water to the most fertile areas and most efficient farms, Matthews said.

Together, the efforts to save and manage water are "probably the first major initiative in the world of a serious adaptation strategy to deal with climate change," he said.

WATER CONFLICTS RISING

But in Griffith and other farm towns, residents see the federal government's efforts as little more than theft that is killing communities. Many Griffith farmers think reducing irrigation flows to protect the environment is unfair.

"Around here, environment has become a real dirty word because all the farmers are taking all the cost for the water for the environment when the whole community should be paying," Dalbroi said.

Other residents oppose permanent water trades outside of Griffith because without water, Griffith itself will wither and die.

"If your neighbor can use water that you can't, sure, trade it. But when farmers sell their water inter-state, that has huge long-term ramifications," said Dino Zappacosta, Griffith's mayor. "Our community will suffer."

As droughts intensify, conflicts over water are likely to increase.

The market-based reforms "could end up favoring people who have money," said Blair Nancarrow, director of the government-funded Australia Research Centre for Water in Society.

"Everybody's starting to realize that there is going to be a different future," she said. "The question is how we go about sharing the little water we have so that everyone gets a fair go."

Sitting at Joe Dalbroi's dining room table, farmer Garry Carlon worries that he might lose money this year, bringing the threat of foreclosure.

"The change has happened so quickly that we don't know if it's climate change," Carlon says.

But Joe's wife, Alice, believes the changes are permanent.

"That's what I'm really scared of," she said. "Climate change could mean there's just going to be a drought ongoing. Every year, we're saying it can't get worse and then every year it's gotten worse."