A New Position on Salinity and its Management

(Chapter 2 of "Salinity: A New Balance", The report of the Salinity Taskforce established to review salinity management in Western Australia)

There are three main actions that Government should be leading:

1. Protection of outstanding public assets from the consequences of salinity and other forms of resource degradation (e.g. water resource catchments, threatened high-value conservation areas or rural towns);
2. Investment in and support for major actions on private land by developing new technologies and new industries (e.g. perennial plants for salinity prevention, salt tolerant plants for productive use of saline land or engineering options); and
3. Support and incentives for planning, coordination and implementation of on-ground works on private land (e.g. for water management and protection of biodiversity).

It is important to distinguish between these because:

• While all are important not all have been adequately recognised or resourced in Government strategies and programs to date;

• Each action needs to be pursued in different ways, with different roles and emphases by government, community groups and individuals;

• Acceptance of these three distinct actions has important implications for future salinity strategies. If Government accepts the Taskforce’s advice on the relative emphasis of each action, this should shape Western Australia’s negotiations with the Commonwealth Government on the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality and phase two of the Natural Heritage Trust; and
• Many written and verbal submissions to the Taskforce also drew these distinctions and indicated that current mechanisms and programs do not appropriately prioritise the three types of action.

These categories do not encompass every aspect of government involvement in salinity (e.g. statewide monitoring and evaluation). However, the Taskforce considers that collectively they capture the key roles directly related to achieving change on the ground.

Previously, salinity has been seen as a problem that would be addressed by landholders across the entire landscape with the protection of public assets achieved as a result of the voluntary actions of landholders. In Western Australia the need for targeting of priority assets was recognised in the 1996 Salinity Action Plan with the establishment of Water Resource Recovery Catchments, Rural Towns Program and Biodiversity Recovery Catchments.

Further improvement in scientific understanding of salinity has highlighted that:

• Other than in some Recovery Catchments, the level of adoption by landholders of salinity prevention measures is generally only a small proportion of that needed to prevent impacts on public assets and that this is likely to continue to be the case for some time;
• Even if landholders were to dramatically and immediately increase the adoption of salinity management measures there would be continuing damage to key public assets as watertables shift to a new equilibrium over the coming decades; and
• For some key public assets at risk, the priority need is for works within or immediately adjacent to the assets. Often this will require engineering solutions, especially where salinisation is well advanced. Work in the surrounding catchment could provide benefits in the longer term but will be insufficient to protect these public assets in the short to medium term.

These insights indicate the need for a much more targeted and selective approach to protection of public assets from salinity that implies a further focussing of efforts under the 1996 Salinity Action Plan. The Taskforce considers that public assets must continue to be identified and prioritised for action because of the richness of the biodiversity and the high value of the public infrastructure and public water supplies that are at risk.

The Salinity Strategy should focus on determining what action is required to protect specific public assets and importantly, whether those actions are justified. This will be achieved through the proposed Framework for Investment in Salinity Management, discussed in Section 5.2.

The highly targeted approach to protecting public assets described above implies that only small areas of farm land would qualify for direct public funding for the purposes of implementation of on-ground works to prevent salinity impacting public assets.

For other farmland, salinity management would primarily be the responsibility of farmers with limited direct financial support from Government.

However the Taskforce is well aware that technologies and farming systems which allow farmers to deal with salinity at a large scale are viable in only a few parts of the State where farmland is at risk (e.g. the broadscale planting of lucerne in some regions).

Therefore the Taskforce considers that there is a very real need to better develop new technologies and farming systems in four broad areas:

• various kinds of engineering works;
• profitable perennials for recharge areas (for salinity prevention);
• salt tolerant plants to make use of saline land; and
• methods to utilise saline water economically.

All of these are important and all have their place in delivering options and solutions for salinity management.

The Taskforce notes in particular the ground swell of support amongst farmers for the use of engineering solutions to combat salinity, particularly by deep-drainage. While there are some situations in which drainage appears to be having a beneficial impact, it is still unclear in what circumstances drainage will be best applied to be effective and economic. There are conflicting views within the farming and scientific communities about the efficacy of engineering solutions to reduce salinity and the significance of potential down-stream impacts. This conflict and uncertainty reinforces the need for far greater resourcing and effort in this area.

Even with concerted efforts under the Salinity Strategy and by groups and individuals, the realistic prognosis is for a continuing worsening of salinity impacts in future. This highlights the importance of developing improved methods for making productive use of saline land and saline water.

Of these four types of technology, the most challenging may be the development of new profitable perennials for recharge areas. Realistically this will be a slow and expensive process with failures as well as successes. In addition, recent predictions of salinity extent suggest that even if perennials are established over large areas, salinity in many catchments will continue to worsen (although at a reduced rate and to a lower final equilibrium level). Therefore we must be clear about the rationale for pursuing this approach. Reasons for advocating it include the following:

• Profitable perennials are the only prospect for prevention (as opposed to remediation) of salinity on most of the threatened agricultural land;
• Substantial improvements in the range and scope of profitable perennials seem achievable;
• Of the four types of technology for salinity management on farms, public off-site benefits would arise primarily from salinity prevention using perennials;
• In situations where subsidies for perennials on farms may be appropriate (ie. on farms near to the key public assets) the level of subsidy can be reduced if the perennials are less costly/more profitable. Therefore public funds can be saved and directed to other priorities;
• More profitable perennials will dramatically reduce the problem of achieving widespread adoption;
• Profitable perennials could also attract private sector finance to meet the establishment costs, which are beyond the means of many farmers;
• New industries based on perennials will generate social benefits to rural regions, resulting from greater wealth and employment. This includes the potential to introduce new industries such as bio-energy, bio-fuels for transport, aquaculture and wood products, as well as maintaining existing industries such as wool and meat production with the introduction of perennial pastures.

In all likelihood, the salinity-related benefits from new industries based on perennials will be small relative to the total of other benefits of such industries, which will include profitability, diversification, regional development and broader environmental benefits. Nevertheless, salinity provides an imperative to pursue this approach, since large-scale salinity prevention on farmland is probably not achievable by any other means. Salinity provides the primary impetus to Western Australia to review its agricultural landuse.

This category represents the dominant approach to salinity policy in Australia over the past ten years primarily driven by the Commonwealth Government’s National Landcare Program and continued by the Natural Heritage Trust. The approach relies on voluntary actions of catchment groups coupled with partial subsidies for on-ground works. The Taskforce considers that this approach remains dominant in the thinking behind the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality.

The Taskforce considers that this approach will not achieve change on the scale necessary to manage salinity. While a range of important benefits for farmers and the broader community have resulted from the National Landcare Program and the Natural Heritage Trust, including benefits to biodiversity conservation and waterways, in many locations salinity prevention benefits are a minor outcome. This is because of the scale of change needed for effective salinity prevention, the great expenses involved in acting at that scale and the ineffectiveness of small-scale changes.

A further important outcome from this category of action has been awareness about salinity and other natural resource management issues. This foundation of knowledge means that Western Australia is very well placed to take the next step in its salinity management strategy, which includes a renewed appreciation of the scale of change required to develop new management options and farming systems.

The Taskforce notes that the 2000 Salinity Strategy contains elements of all three of the actions described previously. However, within Western Australia, the Taskforce considers that the development of new technologies and new industries for salinity management requires significantly increased attention by the State and the Commonwealth.

The Taskforce also considers that the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality is deficient in its dominant emphasis on funding delivery through regional groups, implying an emphasis on planning and coordination for on-ground works (which will achieve relatively little for salinity management in Western Australia). The National Action Plan should focus on the targeted protection of public assets and the development of new technologies, new industries for salinity management and developing technologies to make salinity management information more accessible to land managers and Natural Resource Management Regional Groups.

The Taskforce appreciates the considerable work in planning and coordination that many catchment groups and sub-catchments groups have already undertaken during the Decade of Landcare. While the Taskforce considers that planning and coordination for on-ground work remains vital to achieve other natural resource management outcomes (such as on-farm biodiversity protection and reduction of sediment and nutrient flows into waterways) it is less likely to achieve a widespread reduction in salinity. The main salinity-related contribution from this approach is in the management of water flows from engineering works. Therefore, planning and coordination for on-ground works should primarily be addressed within the new Natural Heritage Trust Program rather than the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality.