Posted 21 May 2020
Subsidised irrigators extracted up to 28 per cent more water than those who received no funds under a national Murray-Darling Basin irrigation efficiency program, a new study has found.
The Australian Government’s $4 billion irrigation efficiency program has led to irrigators who received irrigation infrastructure subsidies extracting up to 28 per cent more water in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) than those who did not receive any funds – affecting the environment and other users, new research has found.
Water management experts across disciplines from UNSW, The University of Adelaide, Australian National University (ANU) and the Environmental Defenders Office examined the impact of taxpayer-funded irrigation infrastructure upgrades on water extractions and environmental water recovery in the MDB.
The full story is available here, courtesy of Caroline Tang.
Professor Andy Baker features in American Water Resources Association ‘Water Resources Impact’, September 2020 edition.
The Connected Waters Initiative (CWI) is pleased to welcome Taylor Coyne to its network as a postgraduate researcher. If you’re engaged in research at a postgraduate level, and you’re interested in joining the CWI network, get in touch! The CWI network includes multidisciplinary researchers across the Schools of Engineering, Sciences, Humanities and Languages and Law.
The Grand Challenge on Rapid Urbanisation will establish Think Deep Australia, led by Dr Marilu Melo Zurita, to explore how we can use our urban underground spaces for community benefit.
On the 21 August 2020, CWI researchers made a submission to the National Water Reform Inquiry, identifying priority areas and making a number of recommendations as to how to achieve a sustainable groundwater future for Australia.
Results published from a research project between the Land Development Department (LDD) Thailand and UNSW has demonstrated how 2-dimensional mapping can be used to understand soil salinity adjacent to a earthen canal in north east Thailand (Khongnawang et al. 2020).
