Australia is making the first splashes in water accounting, a burgeoning field that helps individuals and countries alike manage their water. By TEGAN DOLSTRA.
Chances All three of these activities have a common, crucial component, the importance of which is often underappreciated.
Aside from how hot it was, how many of you spared a thought for the water you used – where it was sourced, how much you used and how much it cost?
Professor Jayne Godfrey, Dean of the ANU College of Business and Economics, thinks about these questions all the time. She is one of the world’s foremost experts in water accounting – an “embryonic” discipline that’s all about providing decision makers with thorough, accurate information about water.
“Every person on the planet has an interest in water,” says Godfrey. “Water accounting is about providing data that can help people make incredibly important decisions about their water usage.”
Godfrey has recently returned from South America, where she gave a talk on water accounting at the inaugural Latin America Water Week in Chile.
“Mine was the only paper on water accounting because Australia is leading the world as the only country with a water accounting standard,” she says. “I was there to share our expertise with the international community and show people what can be done.”
Godfrey met with academics, public policymakers, engineers, hydrologists and major water authorities to give them an insight into how water accounting can help them manage this precious resource.
“Latin America has pretty much every water issue that we have in Australia. It has the driest deserts in the world, but also some of the wettest areas in the world. It has the absolute extremes.
“If you think about Chile, for example, it’s such a long country that it passes through several degrees – it’s got mountains with rain shadows, dry plains, desert and rainforest. How do you manage excess water and flooding in some places at the same time as areas that don’t receive any rain at all for years at a time?”
Water accounting is not just about volumes, prices and geography; it’s also about water quality, an important parameter when it comes to health and the environment.
“Imagine water is being contaminated by a mine in one country and when it flows through to another country it puts human health or agriculture at risk. That’s going to cause tension.
“Water accounting allows countries to ask, ‘are we receiving pure water but exporting contaminated water; if so, what do we need to do about it?’”
So water accounting is also about keeping countries and companies accountable for their blue gold. But what incentives are there for countries to report accurately?
“That’s where auditing would come in,” explains Godfrey. “Water exports should marry up to another country’s imports and vice versa, just like dollars.
“I think we’ve seen how important water accounting could be in the Murray Darling Basin. We saw a lot of issues around water and who held it, how much had actually been delivered from one state to another. It’s really important to have a standardised approach across Australia so we can avoid these discrepancies.”
The current auditing system in Australia is voluntary but an auditing standard is due out later this year.
“There is no international mandate for auditing yet,” says Godfrey. “The rest of the world is going to wait and see how it pans out because Australia is recognised as leading the way, not just in terms of accounting but also management.”
Unfortunately, Godfrey missed out on seeing any dams or other water infrastructure during the conference, but did witness the natural wonder that is the mighty Amazon river.
“The Amazon is amazing,” she says. “I was there just at the tail end of the wet season and saw the river drop by two metres in four days. And that was just a tributary – it was phenomenal.”
Godfrey’s trip down the Amazon reinforced her passion for water accounting and the difference it could make to people’s lives.
“It really struck me how crucial the Amazon river system is to everyone’s lives. We saw people bathing, fishing and mining – both legally and illegally – in the water. It’s also the only form of transport through the jungle, for food, people, everything.”
So tonight when you’re doing the dishes or making a cup of tea, try a bit of your own water accounting – you might be surprised by the numbers.
This story appeared in ANU Reporter magazine. Read the full issue at http://news.anu.edu.au/publications/anu-reporter/