9.7.6 Managing Australia’s water supply We can’t make more water, but we can manage it better. With more people and climate change, water needs careful management. It’s often easier to manage water on a local level. FIGURE12 outlines some of the ways we can develop more efficient uses for Australia’s valuable water resources.
FIGURE12 Possible water management solutions
Australians should reuse and recycle water.
Install a water tank in every house.
Divert rivers back inland to stop water reaching the sea.
Build more desalination plants.
Fix all the leaking water pipes.
Use more groundwater.
Build more dams.
Possible water management solutions
Relocate most of Australia’s farms to the north where most of the rain is.
Use pipes to move water from areas of high rainfall to areas of low rainfall.
Use cloud seeding to make it rain more.
Increase the price of water to homes.
Move water from wet areas such as Tasmania and northern Australia to dry areas using ship tankers.
Use drip irrigation on all crops to save water.
Cover reservoirs to stop evaporation.
Agriculture uses the most water in Australia. To save water, we can improve irrigation systems, which sometimes waste up to 70 per cent of water. We can also recycle water, use desalinated water and collect stormwater. 9.7.7 Managing water across borders Around the world, about 260 rivers are shared by two or more countries, and 13 are shared by five or more. When one country uses a catchment , it can affect others, causing problems. Conflicts have happened in places like the Nile Basin in North Africa, the Mekong River in Asia, the Jordan River Basin in the Middle East and the Silala River in South America. FIGURE13 shows construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile. This has caused a dispute with the downstream countries
TOPIC9 Water in the world 287
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