The role of scarcity in global virtual water flows

Recent analyses of the evolution and structure of trade in virtual water revealed that the number of trade connections and volume of virtual water trade have more than doubled over the past two decades, and that developed countries increasingly draw on the rest of the world to alleviate the pressure on their domestic water resources. Our work builds on these studies, but fills three important gaps in the research on global virtual water trade. First, we note that in previous studies virtual water volumes are lumped together from countries experiencing vastly different degrees of water scarcity. We therefore incorporate water scarcity into assessments of virtual water flows. Second, we note that some previous studies assess virtual water networks only in terms of immediate water used for food production, but omit indirect virtual water used throughout the supply chains underlying all traded goods. In our analysis we therefore use input-output analysis to also include indirect virtual water. We note existing conflicting views about whether trade in virtual water can lead to overall savings in global water resources. We re-visit the Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem in the context of direct as well as indirect virtual water in order to determine whether international trade can be seen as a feasible demand management instrument in alleviating water scarcity. We find that the structure of global virtual water networks changes significantly after adjusting for water scarcity. In addition, when indirect virtual water is appraised the Heckscher-Ohlin Theorem can be validated

Sifting the future from the past: a personal assessment of trends impacting the Australian rangelands

The fore-sighting exercise undertaken at the Australian Rangeland Society Conference at Port Augusta 10 years ago in 1996 developed four scenarios: ?economic growth', ?best practice', ?extra green' and ?partial retreat'. These were later collapsed into two broad directions, ?looking out' (the economic rewards generated by a full application of free market policies with rangeland enterprises having strong external linkages will result in production and management efficiencies which benefit the Australian economy) and ?looking in' (rangeland Australia and its human, economic and ecological resources will be best served by the development and maintenance of strong local communities in each rangeland region). It was anticipated that ?looking out' would apply to only a few rangeland regions where pastoral production is highly valued and rangelands are resilient; ?looking in' would apply to the majority of the rangelands where other values might outweigh pastoral production in the future and where the rangeland resource is considered less resilient. Given the world's embrace of economic and trade globalisation, and the dominance in the federal sphere of one coalition government and one prime minister, it seems inevitable that across Australia the last 10 years were dominated by the ?looking out' direction, while many marginal rangelands had few options but to ?look in'. The 1996 discussions failed to appreciate fully the importance in shaping today's world of singular issues such as terrorism, global climate change, potential disease pandemics, the emergence of China and India and, in an Australian rangelands context, the continuing success of the northern beef industry. In the interim, rangelands science has produced an impressive underpinning of integrative information led both by industry investment and government funding. However, long-term resilience is still not assured in many areas of Australia's rangelands. It continues to be outpaced by those four horsemen of the (rangelands) apocalypse: the need for growth, periodic droughts, personal gain and introduced organisms. During the next 2 decades the rangelands will be buffeted by many of the same old issues and well as obvious emerging ones. Important human-centric ones will be the tension between European and Aboriginal demographic trends, the increased economic dominance of mining, tourism and defence in the rangelands, and the ?sponge effect' of successful towns and particular enterprises. Ecological and bio-physical issues will include carbon trading, energy generation, water catchments, weeds and diseases and agricultural incursions into the northern rangelands. The broad directions of ?looking out' and ?looking in' still retain some currency for today's rangeland decision makers but are now embedded in far stronger and shifting currents that are frequently determined by global and national dynamics, rather than local issues. A distinguishing feature of the Australian rangelands is that they are still essentially intact (apart from their fauna) in a world context and may gain future ecological and economic advantage by remaining so. How to retain this status remains one of the great challenges for the next generation of Australian rangelanders

Powerful choices: transition to a biofuel economy in Australia

This paper summarises the findings of eight years\u27 research into the implications of a transition to a biofuel economy using woody biomass feedstocks for second-generation biofuels. The Powerful Choices study uses a biophysical-economics model of the Australian economy to explore the capability of discrete low-carbon technologies to maintain economic growth, ensure energy security and reduce CO2 emissions out to 2051. The approach applies physical laws of thermodynamics and mass balance to established economic structures to ensure that financial dynamics are constrained by physical reality. Renewable electricity (bio-electricity, wind, solar thermal and solar photovoltaics) and advanced fossil electricity (high efficiency generators, carbon sequestration and storage, nuclear) are examined alone and in various combinations. Alternative transport fuel cycles are explored through renewable fuels (bio-methanol and bio-ethanol) and fossil-based oil replacements (compressed natural gas and shale oil). A shorter summary of the report, co-authed with Andrew Campbell, is available here: Powerful Choices: the know-how for a shift to a biofuel economy in Australi

Joining the dots on over consumption

For APO Barney Foran reviews Urban Consumption, edited by Peter Newton, CSIRO Publishing     Following on from his book on Urban Transitions, also published by CSIRO, Peter Newton’s new collection musters eighteen data rich chapters by leading Australian and international researchers. Several compelling take home messages emerge. The first is that policy must focus on direct and indirect effects of spending patterns. Spending volume drives total environmental impact and also GDP, (thus setting up a Sophie’s Choice for sustainability policy wonks who might get this book in their Christmas stocking). For example, dense cities with light rail are terrific for local air pollution and pedestrian access but they don’t solve global greenhouse because we shop till we drop, and the emissions savings from our non-car gets released through other production chains. Our yearly direct energy use through dietary intake is 4.5 gigajoules (GJ) but the food system of production, processing and delivery uses 40 GJ, a ten-fold difference. Increasing numbers of people per household certainly reduces direct energy use through the sharing of cooking and household appliances, but these savings are countered by increased purchases. Thus environmental savings are difficult to achieve solely through the personal choice route. Probably they have to be imposed top-down through urban structural change and constraining our shop and spend lifestyle. Most insightful to this physical scientist’s views were the chapters on the evolution of the Australian household (Bourke and Ralston), the psychological drivers of consumption (Kyrios), consumer sentiment (Chua and Claus) and a consumerist life (Corrigan). The evolution of Australian households brings wry amusement at our urban plight. The wrap-around urban block with detached house allows us to aspire to everything; swimming pools, triple garages and most importantly the home theatre. The downside for the risk averse is debt, now 160% of disposable household income, a quadrupling since 1977. Intervention points are difficult to determine, so pervasive is the requirement for everything that moves in the ‘new normal’ household. Compulsive buying is facilitated by two to three cards per person each providing credit of $3,000 or more. This in turn provides super profits for the big four banks further entrenching the dependencies, particularly if one’s portfolio sports blue chip shares. Manipulation is central to maintaining the consumer rage and although I studiously avoid the constancy of a digitally linked device on the cappuccino journey, I find that my Panama hat and farmers market purchases are as much an expression of ‘me’, as those I believe are captured by the status quo. For 35 years we’ve diligently surveyed consumerist sentiment and thus our willingness to spend. Minister’s and CEOs watch little else it appears, and if sentiment’s on a downer then the Reserve Bank uses interest rates or quantitative easing to revitalise our optimism. Trouble is the more we spend the more we impact environmentally through all the items in our full shopping trolleys. One wonders whether this sentiment science could be subverted to effectively ‘kick them when they are down’, so burrowing through to lower spending, lower debt and lower impact all round. Turner’s systems chapter provides the comprehensive integration and robust modelling of a ‘big Australia’ that Immigration Ministers get their bureaucrats to shaft at every opportunity. Turner compares the ABS population projections of 40 million people, 34, 29 and 21 million people by 2050 under integrated policy settings of ‘business as usual’, ‘lifestyle change’ and ‘technological investment’. The higher rates of population growth, combined with expected labour force efficiencies, produce alarming outcomes for headline indicators of such as oil imports, international debt, pollution levels, water availability and unemployment. The only way out of unemployment tensions is to double consumption, so blowing the lid of Treasury’s carefully crafted low carbon transition plan. To transition to an Australia that is even vaguely sustainable requires a low and stabilised population number, a 1970’s level of consumption, aggressive implementation of the best technologies we have today and for everyone to transition to a three day working week over a ten year period. The challenge of doing these things simultaneously, and perhaps out of step with the rest of our trading partners, is immense. Turner views our capacity to think this, let alone do this, as highly improbable. The book needs a supplementary ‘dummies guide’ to highlight the collection’s many insights. Did you know that green voters talk big, but consume water and energy at similar rates to their conservative-voting neighbours? That our household waste has the same emissions volume as Hazelwood power station, our dirtiest brown coal generator? Or that stopping waste would knock$500 million off our retailers’ bottom line and possibly put the sector on the skids? The idea that dense cities will save us is just another urban myth. Over a third of Sydney’s high-density housing stock is held under strata title, fuelled by negative gearing and superannuation investments. Owner’s have little incentive to help tenants lower their energy and water use. High rise apartments have the largest direct greenhouse emissions per capita due to lifts, communal hot water and electricity-only energy sources. Most data-rich chapters dissect impacts by income levels and demographic class, a vital requirement for sensitive and equitable policy intervention. One criticism of this collection of hard environmental insights is that it fails to join the obvious dots and to craft a compelling narrative of where Australia is headed. This reviewer’s attempt, from a bottom up perspective, is that we live in the largest houses in the world, over 50% of us are gluttons, we surround our insecurities with gadgets which we finance from high levels of personal debt, and thus generate among the highest levels of environmental impact globally. From a top down perspective, shopping and debt drives our GDP, our urban structures are oil-dependent and health sapping, transformational attempts are meagre, while enabling infrastructure such as electricity generators are greenhouse intensive. As Chapter 2 concludes, “The consequence has been the creation of a materially comfortable (if financially vulnerable) but psychologically insecure citizens...”. Well done Australia! Joining the dots suggests that Australia’s urban consumption system needs a complete collapse and a hard landing to shake its complacency. If society could emerge with half the spending power we’d ramp down environmental impacts, eat less and probably be fitter and happier. It’s about time that science states the bleeding obvious instead of just leaving us with options, should we choose to desist from 24/7 shopping. I hope there’s a third book in this series that can grasp the intellectual freedom to escape the shackles of the thought police and the shadowy ministerial minders and give us the full picture. Barney Foran, Institute of Land Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, Albury. Image: Krug6 / flick

Future dilemma: a reply to the critics

The release of the CSIRO Future Dilemmas report on population environment futures sparked a widespread debate in the Australian print, radio and television media. As well as the positive or neutral responses that focused on the issues, there were three sorces of overt criticism to which one of the authors replies in this article. The first are the economists, Chris Murphy and Mark Wooden, members of the Ministerially appointed external reference group, who oversaw the project in due diligence terms. The second is the green movement where the response is focused on the article by Ted Trainer in People and Place (vol. 11, no. 1). The third are three journalists from The Australian newspaper who concentrated their commentary on personal criticisms of the authors, rather than dealing logically with any of the factual issues analysed in the report. The three sets of criticisms help focus the next stage of the work but it is unlikely that doubling the effort and increasing the precision of the work will alter the attitudes of the broad groups that these critics represent. Once strong ideologies are formed, whether in science, society or politics, they are difficult to deconstruct and reform.Pagination on item is incorrec