From Disaster Response to Risk Management (eBook)

Australia's National Drought Policy

Linda C. Botterill, Donald A. Wilhite (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: PDF

2005 | 2005
XII, 212 Seiten
Springer Netherland (Verlag)
978-1-4020-3124-3 (ISBN)

Infos

An academically focused collection of papers highlighting the successes and challenges of a move from disaster to risk management in responding to drought. The book passes on the experiences gained from Australia's trail-blazing new policy, introduced in 1992.

(a) Dr Linda Botterill is a Post Doctoral Fellow in the National Europe Centre at the Australian National University where she is undertaking research on agricultural policy in Australia and Europe. She also lectures in political science in the School of Social Sciences. Dr Botterill has extensive experience in public policy having worked in the Australian Government Department of Primary Industries and Energy, as an adviser to two Cabinet Ministers and as a policy officer in two industry associations before undertaking her doctorate in political science at the ANU.

(b) Dr. Donald A. Wilhite is the founder and director of the National Drought Mitigation Center and Professor, School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has extensive experience in drought planning and policy, drought mitigation, and drought monitoring. Dr. Wilhite has worked with many federal agencies and state governments in the United States and with many foreign governments and international organizations on a broad range of drought management issues.

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In 1992 Australia's Commonwealth and State governments announced the introduction of a National Drought Policy adopting an innovative risk management approach, which received broad support from Australia's major political parties and the policy community. This trail-blazing attempt and the experiences with the development and implementation of this policy over the past decade have intrigued the international scientific and policy communities. The present book comprises an academically focused collection of papers, which the Editors hope will provide others moving in a similar direction with the benefit of experience. The work highlights the successes and challenges of a move from disaster to risk management in responding to drought.As such it will be a valuable and useful addition to the international literature on drought preparedness and response.

Inhalt

TABLE OF CONTENTS 6
FOREWORD 8
CONTRIBUTORS 9
ABBREVIATIONS 12
GLOSSARY 13
INTRODUCTION 14
CHAPTER 1: LIVING IN THE AUSTRALIAN ENVIRONMENT 18
1. Introduction 18
2. The Biophysical Environment 19
3. The social and political environment 22
4. Implications for drought policy 24
CHAPTER 2: CLIMATE AND DROUGHT IN THE SUBTROPICS: THE AUSTRALIAN EXAMPLE 28
1. Introduction 28
2. Defining drought 29
3. The climate of Australia 32
4. Changing rainfall seasonality 36
5. Causes of climate variability 36
6. Aridity and drought in Australia 42
7. A brief history of Australian drought 42
8. Climate change and the future 47
9. Summary and conclusions 49
CHAPTER 3: INDIGENOUS WATER PHILOSOPHY IN AN UNCERTAIN LAND 50
1. Introduction 50
2. ‘TEK’ 50
3. Law 51
4. Rainmaking 57
5. Conclusions: philosophy in practice 61
CHAPTER 4: LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY APPROACHES TO LIVING WITH UNCERTAINTY: THE NATIONAL DROUGHT POLICY 64
1. Introduction 64
2. Drought as a disaster 64
3. The 1992 National Drought Policy 66
4. The 1990s drought 69
5. Between major droughts 1996-2001 70
6. The 2001-03 Drought 72
7. Drought policy challenges and the way forward 73
8. Concluding remarks 76
CHAPTER 5: MANAGING RISK?: SOCIAL POLICY RESPONSES IN TIME OF DROUGHT 78
1. Introduction 78
2. A political context 79
3. The problem: when is a drought a crisis? 81
4. Managing risk through welfare? 82
5. Conclusions and reflections 95
CHAPTER 6: DROUGHT, NEWS MEDIA AND POLICY DEBATE 98
1. Introduction 98
2. Disaster stories 99
3. Drought as disaster news 101
4. The media’s role in framing policy debate 103
5. How the national print news media cover drought 105
6. Exceptional circumstances? 109
CHAPTER 7: AT THE INTERSECTION OF SCIENCE AND POLITICS: DEFINING EXCEPTIONAL DROUGHT 112
1. Introduction 112
2. The importance of welfare support 113
3. Science and drought declarations in Australia 113
4. The political context 118
5. Resolving the tension between the science and the politics of drought 121
6. Future options 122
CHAPTER 8: DROUGHT RISK AS A NEGOTIATED CONSTRUCT 126
1. Introduction 126
2. Social constructs of drought risk—what’s so special about drought? 128
3. Different ways of defining risk 131
4. Do farmers underestimate the likelihood of drought? 134
5. Different models of managing risk 137
6. How does agricultural science deal with risk as a negotiated construct? 138
CHAPTER 9: PROSPECTS FOR INSURING AGAINST DROUGHT IN AUSTRALIA 140
1. Introduction 140
2. Markets for risk 141
3. Multi-peril crop insurance 142
4. Rainfall insurance 147
5. Weather derivatives and yield index insurance 148
6. Prospects for the future 149
CHAPTER 10: POLICY FOR AGRICULTURAL DROUGHT IN AUSTRALIA: AN ECONOMICS PERSPECTIVE 152
1. Introduction 152
2. Economic aspects of agricultural drought 152
3. Public policy responses in Australia 156
4. Economic assessment 158
5. Suggestions for policy improvement 166
CHAPTER 11: DROUGHT POLICY AND PREPAREDNESS: THE AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE IN AN INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT* 170
1. Introduction 170
2. Drought policy and preparedness: overview 171
3. Drought monitoring, early warning, and prediction 173
4. Risk and impact assessment 175
5. Mitigation and response 176
6. Examples of international experience with drought policy and preparedness 179
7. Global drought preparedness network 187
8. Conclusion 188
CHAPTER 12: LESSONS FOR AUSTRALIA AND BEYOND 190
1. Introduction 190
2. Tensions within the National Drought Policy 190
3. Opportunities for lesson drawing and possible future directions 194
REFERENCES 198
INDEX 220

Textauszug

CHAPTER 12: LESSONS FOR AUSTRALIA AND BEYOND (p.177-178)

LINDA COURTENAY BOTTERILL

1. Introduction

Australia has had its National Drought Policy in place for more than a decade. It is therefore timely to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the policy approach that was adopted in 1992 and to draw some lessons for Australia and other countries considering an integrated policy response to drought. Many of the lessons outlined below apply particularly to industrialised countries in which the farm sector is diminishing in importance, in terms of its contribution to GDP, and in which drought does not result in widespread human disasters such as famine.

In summary, policy makers in Australia in 1992 attempted to align attitudes towards drought with the reality of a highly variable climate. The move from a disaster response to an approach based on self-reliance and risk management was based in a recognition that Australian farmers should expect droughts to occur and should factor drought risk into their business decisions. In economic and policy terms, the recommendations of the Drought Policy Review Task Force which reported in 1990 and the direction of the National Drought Policy announced in 1992 were coherent and logical and would allow the farm sector to operate efficiently and productively within the constraints of the Australian climate. However, drought responses are not only concerned with economic and policy coherence - they are developed in a specific socio-political context.

The following section discusses the context of Australia’s drought response and highlights some of the tensions which arise between different policy objectives and different values within the Australian community and the problems that have arisen in the implementation of the National Drought Policy. The final section identifies the lessons from which Australian policy makers and their counterparts elsewhere in the world can draw in considering future drought responses.


2. Tensions within the National Drought Policy

The collection of papers in this book attempts to illustrate the range of issues that need to be considered by policy makers if they are to develop an equitable, affordable and rational drought response. There are several perspectives at play. First, drought can be considered literally from the ground up. This is the way Australia’s indigenous people managed their available water. As Deborah Rose points out in her chapter, ‘people sought to enhance water’s capacity to nourish life without seeking radically to alter the water conditions of their country or, cumulatively, of the continent’. Rose describes a way of life in which people are ‘of the land’ rather than ‘on the land’. This is a view of Australian climate which does not conceptualise climate ‘events’ such as drought as inherently transgressive - the climate just is.

However, the arrival of Europeans on this continent brought with it the introduction of a form of agriculture developed for a more predictable climate cycle. This type of farming provides the second perspective - that of the hard-working farmer struggling against the elements. Land reforms in the mid-nineteenth century resulted in the development of small-scale family farming and a push to closer settlements which persisted well into the twentieth century. These developments were associated with an agrarian view of agriculture which carried with it moral and identity issues relating to the role of farming as intrinsically valuable and special in comparison with other economic activities. Interestingly this perception of farming as an essential activity persists in industrialised countries, even when farming activity is now only a small contributor to national wealth and food shortages are a remote and unpleasant memory.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.6.2005
• Reihe/Serie: Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research
• Reihe/Serie: Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research
• Zusatzinfo: XII, 212 p.
• Verlagsort: Dordrecht
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Natur / Ökologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Umwelttechnik / Biotechnologie
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre
• Schlagworte: Agricultural Policy • climate change • Climate Change Management • Development • Drought • natural hazard management • Public Policy • Risk Management • Water Quality and Water Pollution
• ISBN-10: 1-4020-3124-6 / 1402031246
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4020-3124-3 / 9781402031243