FOR 27 years Yvonne and Noel Gerke ran a transport business, hauling logs from Tasmania’s forests to mills grinding woodchips for customers in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. Then came the global financial downturn as well as campaigns to protect Tasmania’s native forests (see article). It clobbered the timber industry. “We employed 45 people until it crashed and burned,” says Ms Gerke. Four years ago the Gerkes took a payout from Australia’s federal government to quit logging. They are now gambling on another commodity: water.
Australia is the world’s driest continent. Climate change is expected to make its droughts even more frequent. The country is still paying for years of overexploitation of its biggest river system, the Murray-Darling basin. The federal government in Canberra is spending A$3.2 billion ($2.2 billion) buying up and cancelling farmers’ water entitlements in a bid to reduce salinity and repair other environmental damage stretching back a century.
While mainland...Continue reading
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