Sydney, Australia - Australia’s
remaining healthy rivers, creeks, wetlands, floodplains
and estuaries would be protected and billions of
dollars in repair bills saved under a proposal by
WWF-Australia to consolidate the country's existing
water management programs.
A new report released by WWF-Australia
today, Securing Australia’s Natural Water Infrastructure
Assets, proposes a national framework and a four-step
plan to coordinate the identification and protection
of aquatic ecosystems deemed to be of high conservation
value in Australia.
“Australia’s natural water infrastructure
assets underpin Australia’s economic growth, society’s
wellbeing and our unique biodiversity,” the report’s
author and WWF-Australia's Freshwater Manager Dr
Stuart Blanch says.
“But efforts to protect these
waterways have been disjointed with around 20 major
programs working separately around the country,
including the National Water Initiative and the
National Parks program,” Dr Blanch says.
“To avoid the mistakes of the
past and ensure the future of Australia’s water
assets, we need to bring all these pieces together
and coordinate efforts to protect our healthy waterways.”
Australia has three million kilometres
of rivers and creeks, at least 16 million hectares
of nationally important wetlands, and over 1,560
estuaries.
“In Australia we are lucky enough
to have a choice – we can leave our rivers in a
healthy state for the benefit of future generations
or we can mismanage these assets and face huge repair
bills,” says Professor Peter Cullen from the WWF-convened
Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.
“This report provides important
policy advice to our political leaders and stresses
the need to develop some common language around
high conservation rivers to avoid the costly mistakes
of the last century.”
There are countless examples of
poor water management in Australia, from shrinking
floodplains and dying river gums in the south to
pollution and sediments washing into the Great Barrier
Reef lagoon in the north.
“Lessons learnt from Murray Darling
and other stressed waterways show that it’s ten
times cheaper to protect healthy water systems than
repair them once they’ve been degraded,” Dr Blanch
says.
“Up to $5 billion has already
been dedicated to repairing degraded rivers like
the Snowy River and the Murray but we can avoid
spending that kind of money in the future by protecting
the healthy rivers we have left.”
The report proposes that all of
Australia’s aquatic ecosystems be classified according
to their conservation status, and that all of those
deemed to be of high conservation value be protected
by 2010.
As the 4th World Water Forum finishes
in Mexico, WWF is calling on Australia’s leaders
to show their commitment to securing our water assets
and establish a set of national targets to protect
remaining healthy aquatic ecosystems.
