PICTURING FRESHWATER JUSTICE IN RURAL AUSTRALIA

Jennifer McKay, Ganesh Keremane & Adam Gray

To order a copy of this book please email jennifer.mckay@unisa.edu.au
A pdf is available for download (Picturing Fresh Water Jusitice in Rural Australia.pdf 2.4Mb)

Foreword by Ian Atkinson,
CEO CRC for Irrigation Futures

I encouraged the authors to publish this book to broaden the current debate in this country over water rights and the competing uses for this critical resource. A key output of Cooperative Research Centres is peer reviewed research publications. The pictures and captions contained here were collected as data for research but deserved a much broader audience. The cliché A picture is worth a thousand words correctly applies because our aim is to bring you a rich expression of local people’s ideas and emotions through the photos they have taken and the words they have penned.

This need came home to me forcibly when some of the material was displayed by Jennifer McKay at the Adelaide Fringe Festival and I attended the opening of this ‘artistic’ display. The audience included many people who had no connection with agriculture and whose perception of irrigators was based on the popular media and urban myths. However the pictures enabled this audience to develop a richer perspective of our irrigation regions. It fired people’s curiosity and led me into some great conversations on a variety of water issues.

The contents of this book came from one of the CRC for Irrigation Futures research programs. Called ‘System Harmonisation’ the program wanted to identify opportunities for improved management of surface and groundwater resources, to satisfy environmental and consumptive demand in regional areas.

My hope is that through this book the images will continue to get people thinking about our irrigation regions in new and more productive ways. The additional content from a range of other perspectives, including researchers and members of the legal fraternity, add to the publications depth. I extend my personal congratulations to everyone who has been involved in the publication of this book.