Botterill / Wilhite From Disaster Response to Risk Management

Australia's National Drought Policy
1. Auflage 2005
ISBN: 978-1-4020-3124-3
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 22, 218 Seiten

Reihe: Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Botterill, Linda C.

Wilhite, Donald A.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;TABLE OF CONTENTS;6
2;FOREWORD;8
3;CONTRIBUTORS;9
4;ABBREVIATIONS;12
5;GLOSSARY;13
6;INTRODUCTION;14
7;CHAPTER 1: LIVING IN THE AUSTRALIAN ENVIRONMENT;18
7.1;1. Introduction;18
7.2;2. The Biophysical Environment;19
7.3;3. The social and political environment;22
7.4;4. Implications for drought policy;24
8;CHAPTER 2: CLIMATE AND DROUGHT IN THE SUBTROPICS: THE AUSTRALIAN EXAMPLE;28
8.1;1. Introduction;28
8.2;2. Defining drought;29
8.3;3. The climate of Australia;32
8.4;4. Changing rainfall seasonality;36
8.5;5. Causes of climate variability;36
8.6;6. Aridity and drought in Australia;42
8.7;7. A brief history of Australian drought;42
8.8;8. Climate change and the future;47
8.9;9. Summary and conclusions;49
9;CHAPTER 3: INDIGENOUS WATER PHILOSOPHY IN AN UNCERTAIN LAND;50
9.1;1. Introduction;50
9.2;2. ‘TEK’;50
9.3;3. Law;51
9.4;4. Rainmaking;57
9.5;5. Conclusions: philosophy in practice;61
10;CHAPTER 4: LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY APPROACHES TO LIVING WITH UNCERTAINTY: THE NATIONAL DROUGHT POLICY;64
10.1;1. Introduction;64
10.2;2. Drought as a disaster;64
10.3;3. The 1992 National Drought Policy;66
10.4;4. The 1990s drought;69
10.5;5. Between major droughts 1996-2001;70
10.6;6. The 2001-03 Drought;72
10.7;7. Drought policy challenges and the way forward;73
10.8;8. Concluding remarks;76
11;CHAPTER 5: MANAGING RISK?: SOCIAL POLICY RESPONSES IN TIME OF DROUGHT;78
11.1;1. Introduction;78
11.2;2. A political context;79
11.3;3. The problem: when is a drought a crisis?;81
11.4;4. Managing risk through welfare?;82
11.5;5. Conclusions and reflections;95
12;CHAPTER 6: DROUGHT, NEWS MEDIA AND POLICY DEBATE;98
12.1;1. Introduction;98
12.2;2. Disaster stories;99
12.3;3. Drought as disaster news;101
12.4;4. The media’s role in framing policy debate;103
12.5;5. How the national print news media cover drought;105
12.6;6. Exceptional circumstances?;109
13;CHAPTER 7: AT THE INTERSECTION OF SCIENCE AND POLITICS: DEFINING EXCEPTIONAL DROUGHT;112
13.1;1. Introduction;112
13.2;2. The importance of welfare support;113
13.3;3. Science and drought declarations in Australia;113
13.4;4. The political context;118
13.5;5. Resolving the tension between the science and the politics of drought;121
13.6;6. Future options;122
14;CHAPTER 8: DROUGHT RISK AS A NEGOTIATED CONSTRUCT;126
14.1;1. Introduction;126
14.2;2. Social constructs of drought risk—what’s so special about drought?;128
14.3;3. Different ways of defining risk;131
14.4;4. Do farmers underestimate the likelihood of drought?;134
14.5;5. Different models of managing risk;137
14.6;6. How does agricultural science deal with risk as a negotiated construct?;138
15;CHAPTER 9: PROSPECTS FOR INSURING AGAINST DROUGHT IN AUSTRALIA;140
15.1;1. Introduction;140
15.2;2. Markets for risk;141
15.3;3. Multi-peril crop insurance;142
15.4;4. Rainfall insurance;147
15.5;5. Weather derivatives and yield index insurance;148
15.6;6. Prospects for the future;149
16;CHAPTER 10: POLICY FOR AGRICULTURAL DROUGHT IN AUSTRALIA: AN ECONOMICS PERSPECTIVE;152
16.1;1. Introduction;152
16.2;2. Economic aspects of agricultural drought;152
16.3;3. Public policy responses in Australia;156
16.4;4. Economic assessment;158
16.5;5. Suggestions for policy improvement;166
17;CHAPTER 11: DROUGHT POLICY AND PREPAREDNESS: THE AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE IN AN INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT*;170
17.1;1. Introduction;170
17.2;2. Drought policy and preparedness: overview;171
17.3;3. Drought monitoring, early warning, and prediction;173
17.4;4. Risk and impact assessment;175
17.5;5. Mitigation and response;176
17.6;6. Examples of international experience with drought policy and preparedness;179
17.7;7. Global drought preparedness network;187
17.8;8. Conclusion;188
18;CHAPTER 12: LESSONS FOR AUSTRALIA AND BEYOND;190
18.1;1. Introduction;190
18.2;2. Tensions within the National Drought Policy;190
18.3;3. Opportunities for lesson drawing and possible future directions;194
19;REFERENCES;198
20;INDEX;220

Leseproben

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.