Drought exposes cracks in Australia's acclaimed water market

[WorldNews]

View attachment 27358​

By Colin Packham SYDNEY (Reuters) - A pioneering Australian scheme to improve the management of water in the world's driest inhabited continent is facing its first real test as an intensifying El Nino threatens crops and builds tensions between farmers and environmentalists. The three-year old management plan for the Murray-Darling basin, an area twice the size of Spain and home to 40 percent of Australia's agricultural output, has been lauded internationally and suggested as a guide for drought-hit California. "All of these lessons are appropriate to the United States," said water policy expert Professor David Feldman of the University of California, Irvine, where the state is suffering from a four-year dry spell that has threatened agriculture and helped fan severe wildfires this summer.

Continue reading...