Australia's epic drought: The situation is grim

By Kathy Marks in Sydney / posted at The Independent

Australia has warned that it will have to switch off the water supply to the continent's food bowl unless heavy rains break an epic drought - heralding what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation.

The Murray-Darling basin in south-eastern Australia yields 40 per cent of the country's agricultural produce. But the two rivers that feed the region are so pitifully low that there will soon be only enough water for drinking supplies. Australia is in the grip of its worst drought on record, the victim of changing weather patterns attributed to global warming and a government that is only just starting to wake up to the severity of the position.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, a hardened climate-change sceptic, delivered dire tidings to the nation's farmers yesterday. Unless there is significant rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the principal agricultural area. Crops such as rice, cotton and wine grapes will fail, citrus, olive and almond trees will die, along with livestock.

A ban on irrigation, which would remain in place until May next year, spells possible ruin for thousands of farmers, already debt-laden and in despair after six straight years of drought.

Lovers of the Australian landscape often cite the poet Dorothea Mackellar who in 1904 penned the classic lines: "I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains." But the land that was Mackellar's muse is now cracked and parched, and its mighty rivers have shrivelled to sluggish brown streams. With paddocks reduced to dust bowls, graziers have been forced to sell off sheep and cows at rock-bottom prices or buy in feed at great expense. Some have already given up, abandoning pastoral properties that have been in their families for generations. The rural suicide rate has soared.

Mr Howard acknowledged that the measures are drastic. He said the prolonged dry spell was "unprecedentedly dangerous" for farmers, and for the economy as a whole. Releasing a new report on the state of the Murray and Darling, Mr Howard said: "It is a grim situation, and there is no point in pretending to Australia otherwise. We must all hope and pray there is rain."

But prayer may not suffice, and many people are asking why crippling water shortages in the world's driest inhabited continent are only now being addressed with any sense of urgency.

The causes of the current drought, which began in 2002 but has been felt most acutely over the past six months, are complex. But few scientists dispute the part played by climate change, which is making Australia hotter and drier...
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From a related articel:

The driest continent on earth

Australia has one of the world's highest living standards with 85 per cent living in urban areas, and a GDP of A$26,900 (£11,200) per capita

* About 80 per cent of the population live on the eastern seaboard or the coastal fringes of the continent

* 402,000 people are employed in agriculture or agriculture-related services

* Drought halved wheat production in 2002-03

* The hole in the ozone layer over the southern hemisphere covers Australia, and measures nearly 17.5 million sq km

* It is the driest continent on earth, with about one third considered desert

* Australians are the highest per-capita greenhouse gas emitters in the world, as most electricity comes from coal

* Coal combustion is responsible for about 50 per cent of Australia's carbon emissions

* Average temperatures have risen by 0.7C over 100 years, mostly in the past 50 years

* 60 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef was bleached in 2002, the result of warmer ocean temperatures
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China's Hebei Province is also having problems with drought:

BEIJING - Some 500,000 people in China's northern province of Hebei are suffering from a shortage of drinking water following a drought that began late last year, the official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday.

Quoting local water conservation authorities, the agency said more than 200 small reservoirs had dried up in Hebei.
Sources at the provincial bureau of agriculture said the water shortage was affecting farmland in Hebei, one of China's major wheat and corn growing provinces.

It was also affecting hydro-power generation, the news agency said.

Last month it was reported that a drought in southwestern China could continue well into April, affecting nearly 10 million people and 9 million livestock.