A new “water economics” needed to safeguard supplies of domestic water and make it a common good. Australia’s fossil fuels make it a rich “Climate Wrecker”. Carbon capture technologies fail to deliver.

Ask members of the public to list the top environmental problems and I reckon that plastic pollution, climate change and loss of biodiversity will feature prominently. I suspect that shortage of clean, accessible domestic (or fresh) water will get relatively few mentions.

Peter Sainsbury

But following decades of undervaluing water, collective mismanagement and failure to recognise water as a common good “the world faces a growing water disaster. For the first time in human history, the hydrological cycle is out of balance, undermining an equitable and sustainable future for all”, according to the Global Commission on the Economics of Water.

To illustrate:

• More than 1000 children under five die every day from illnesses caused by unsafe water and sanitation;
• Women and girls spend 200 million hours every day collecting water. Imagine every Australian aged 10-80 years spending 11 hours a day searching for, collecting and carrying drinking water home;
• Food systems are running out of fresh water; and
• Cities are sinking as aquifers run dry.

Although the global water cycle is intimately connected to climate change, extreme weather events, loss of biodiversity and soil health, and access to clean water influences almost every one of the Sustainable Development Goals, current approaches to managing the water cycle focus on water resources (which are often falsely regarded as abundant and cheap) rather than the economic drivers of the cycle.

The Commission is calling for “a new water economics” with recognition of the connection between the environment, social equity and economic efficiency (the Three Es) at its heart. Recommendations include:

• Build global water governance to manage the hydrological cycle as a common good and safeguard the world’s water resources;
• Governments shaping markets to value and price water to reflect its scarcity, ensure its efficient and equitable use, and preserve its role in natural ecosystems;
• Forge partnerships to achieve:
  • A revolution in food systems – for instance, increase access of traditional farmers to micro-irrigation, adopt regenerative agriculture systems, reduce dependence on water-intensive crops and increase the intake of plant-based foods,
  • Restoration of natural habitats to protect water in the soils (green water),
  • A circular water economy,
  • No child dying from unsafe water by 2030.
• Develop public-private Just Water Partnerships to raise the quantity and reliability of finance for water;
• Redirect the massive subsidies that facilitate overuse of water and environmental degradation to encouraging water saving solutions, protecting freshwater ecosystems and ensuring vulnerable communities have access to clean water.

The central concern of economics is access to, and distribution of, scarce resources. When fresh water is plentiful, always easily accessible and free there is no need for an “economics of water”. I doubt there are many places in the world these days where that is true – hence the need for an economic perspective. Whether it is appropriate for private profits to be made from supplying fresh water to communities is another matter.

Australia: a rich ‘Global Climate Wrecker’

According to Oil Change International, four rich Global North countries (US, Canada, Norway and Australia) will be responsible for 70% of the global CO2 emissions that will be generated by the oil and gas produced in new fields and fracking wells developed between 2025 and 2035. The 32 gigatons (Gt) of CO2 produced by only the new developments in only these four countries are equivalent to three times the annual emissions of all the world’s coal-fired power stations. (“New” refers to facilities that are not yet even under construction and potentially might still be stopped.)

I don’t think that I’d often be accused of being an apologist for the failure of Australian Governments to take emissions reductions seriously. However, I consider it a bit harsh to put Australia in the company of the US in this matter, as demonstrated by the figure below of national responsibilities for projected oil and gas production from new facilities between now and 2035. The US alone is responsible for 58% and Canada a further 9%. Australia’s contribution is about 1%. There are also quite a few countries with reasonably well-developed economies that are not in the Global North where new production will greatly exceed Australia’s.

More justified is the report calling Australia one of the worst “Global North Planet Wreckers” on the basis of existing fossil fuel production. Also justified is calling out the hypocrisy of Australia’s bid to host the COP meeting in 2026 while the government approves the ongoing operation of the North West Shelf gas processing facility to 2070 and seeks Pacific nations as COP partners when our emissions are submerging their homes.

The principal reason behind countries’ plans for new oil and gas fields has little to do with expanding production, but rather to maintaining it as existing facilities dry up. This is well demonstrated in the next figure of projected global extraction in existing, under construction and new facilities between now and 2035 (BOE = barrels of oil equivalent).

The purpose of the report is to remind countries of their pledge at the 2023 COP meeting in Dubai to transition away from fossil fuels and to do it in an equitable manner, which implies that the richest countries with the highest capacity to do so should lead the transition. Australia certainly should be a leader – it is rich; it has plentiful economic and social capacity to transition; it has been and remains a major producer of fossil fuels (mainly coal and gas); it continues to approve new fossil fuel facilities; and it is largely ignoring its 2023 pledge. Sadly, we are, as the report says, a “rogue actor on the global stage when it comes to climate change” – and we still want to host a COP meeting!

As an aside, Oil Change International says that the 32Gt of new emissions are a fifth of the remaining carbon budget for a 1-in-2 chance of keeping global warming under 1.5oC. However, as that goal is effectively dead and buried already, it no longer seems like a very helpful comparison. More instructive is that currently operational coal, oil and gas extraction facilities around the world still contain enough fossil fuel to produce more than 3.5 times the CO2 that remains in the 1.5oC budget – that’s why the SS 1.5 has already left the dock.

Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado, a Brazilian photographer, died recently aged 81. I first became aware of his work about 30 years ago when I saw some black and white photographs he’d taken in the oil fields of Kuwait. I have always remembered one image in particular of two men working beside an oil well that had been damaged during the first Gulf War. The shininess of everything has a hyper-real quality – the men look as though they belong in a children’s animated movie. These days one would think the image had been AI-photoshopped. It is one of the most stunning photographs I have ever seen.

Salgado’s work focused on the lives of people who were downtrodden, oppressed, exploited or lacking basic aspects of life such as water, food, shelter or decent working conditions. He also documented nature, landscapes and wildlife and, with his wife, worked to restore Brazil’s coastal Atlantic Forest. Salgado may have photographed in colour, but I’ve only ever seen black and white images.

My only book of Salgado’s work concerns the eradication of polio, not in Sydney, New York or London but in the parched lands, remote villages and teeming cities of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Pakistan, Somalia and India. Places where the vaccination teams sometimes needed armed guards.

If you aren’t acquainted with Salgado’s work, I encourage you to have a look online. I’m sure you’ll be impressed.

CCUS and CDR – what’s the difference?

In a nutshell, Carbon Capture, Use and Storage (CCUS) captures CO2 at the point that it is released by, say, a coal-fired power station where the CO2 is highly concentrated, while Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) uses a variety of technologies and natural processes to capture CO2 that has already been released into the atmosphere, where its concentration is much much lower (currently about 1 part in 2500). When CDR uses industrial technologies, rather than nature, to draw CO2 out of thin air, it is referred to as Direct Air Capture (DAC).

The characteristics of the two approaches are simply depicted in the diagram.

Fossil fuel companies and their boosters love to promote the contribution that CCUS and CDR can make to the problem of global warming. The reality is that both are very expensive and neither is currently well developed, nor anywhere near ready to operate at the scale needed to make a meaningful dent in CO2 emissions or its concentration in the atmosphere.

CCUS currently captures 51 Mt of CO2 per year; somewhere about 0.1% of current global CO2 emissions. The histogram below shows the current capture capacity of CCUS operations around the world at various stages of development. The orange and purple bars are the estimates of different agencies.

DAC currently captures about 0.01 Mt of CO2 per year – roughly one four-millionth of current emissions (I think). Climateworks, one of the world’s first DAC commercial enterprises, began operations in 2021 with great hopes and promises. Unfortunately, it is nowhere near capturing as much CO2 as it projected, its own emissions have so far exceeded what it has captured and the cost per ton of CO2 captured is astronomical. The story would be amusing if it weren’t so serious.

Bottom trawlers and bycatch

What percentage of marine life caught by bottom trawlers is “unwanted”, “accidental” (hardly!) or bycatch – e.g. sharks, dolphins, sea turtles, non-target fish species?

1. a) 60%
2. b) 50%
3. c) 40%

Unfortunately, it’s 60%. In what sort of crazy world is this considered environmentally, or even economically, responsible and sustainable? Not forgetting totally disrespectful of other species. And all so that humans can enjoy deep sea perch (orange roughy).

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/06/environment-australia-declared-climate-change-rogue-actor/

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