Description

Book Synopsis
The Murray–Darling Basin – Australia's food bowl – is in crisis. For more than a century, a series of environmental catastrophes have brought the ecosystem to its knees: soil erosion, sand drifts and dust storms, salinity, algal blooms, the threat to native flora and fauna and the drying out of internationally recognised wetlands, along with steadily worsening droughts.

Award-winning author Quentin Beresford delves into the history of the river system since European settlement and reveals Australia's destructive relationship with the environment, and the willingness of politicians to ignore expert advice. The dispossession and marginalisation of local Indigenous people denied European settlers the cultural knowledge to manage the Basin sustainably. Instead, we've had waves of nation-building irrigation schemes and agricultural enterprises, all promoted by politicians more concerned with short-term profits than long-term sustainability.

We are now at a point of reckoning. Only an end to the centuries-old development-at-all-costs approach, along with a recognition of Indigenous water rights, an acceptance of science and the adoption of sustainable farming practices can save the once mighty Murray–Darling.

Wounded Country: The Murray–Darling Basin – a

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    A Paperback / softback by Quentin Beresford

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      Book details

      Publisher NewSouth Publishing
      Published 1 September 2021
      ISBN-13 9781742236780
      978-1742236780
      ISBN-10 1742236782
      Also in:
      Earth Sciences, Geography & Environment Conservation of the environment

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      The Murray–Darling Basin – Australia's food bowl – is in crisis. For more than a century, a series of environmental catastrophes have brought the ecosystem to its knees: soil erosion, sand drifts and dust storms, salinity, algal blooms, the threat to native flora and fauna and the drying out of internationally recognised wetlands, along with steadily worsening droughts.

      Award-winning author Quentin Beresford delves into the history of the river system since European settlement and reveals Australia's destructive relationship with the environment, and the willingness of politicians to ignore expert advice. The dispossession and marginalisation of local Indigenous people denied European settlers the cultural knowledge to manage the Basin sustainably. Instead, we've had waves of nation-building irrigation schemes and agricultural enterprises, all promoted by politicians more concerned with short-term profits than long-term sustainability.

      We are now at a point of reckoning. Only an end to the centuries-old development-at-all-costs approach, along with a recognition of Indigenous water rights, an acceptance of science and the adoption of sustainable farming practices can save the once mighty Murray–Darling.

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