Instead, funding for communities must be targeted at helping farmers adapt and growing industries that will be viable during water scarcity, climate change and extreme conditions. All the latest news, comment, culture and sport from Guardian... DA: 70 PA: 89 MOZ Rank: 20 Vast quantities of water are now extracted and used, during drought and flood, to irrigate crops including rice and cotton.Subsidies that perpetuate the – hydro-illogical – cycle of unsustainable irrigation around the world should stop being funded. NSW Health issued a warning to churchgoers in southwest Sydney after a woman attended several services, including a funeral, while infected last week.It's on the higher end of figures Chant said are being studied to determine the number of people who have been exposed to the coronavirus, which an early estimate puts at between 1 and 2 per cent of the total population in Australia. "That study is being undertaken at the moment and will be reported in due course," Chant said.Researchers at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance and the Kirby Institute at the University of NSW have been leading the study and had almost finished a survey of Sydney, according to the Australian Financial Review. Opinion - The Guardian - Australia - feedimo is an international news channel created by and for a connected generation. "It would mean that there are an awful lot of people who have been infected, had few if any symptoms, and therefore never got on the radar," Professor Esterman said.As many as 500,000 Australians could have been infected with coronavirus and not necessarily know it, according to New South Wales chief health officer Kerry Chant.The outbreak in Victoria continues to grow. Temperatures in Death Valley are sometimes that hot, but then again no one is growing cotton or cod there.Australia is experiencing this water stress now. "But it's an important component of our surveillance plan to actually understand how many people at particular points have been exposed," she added. She compared it to hard-hit New York City where 20 per cent of the population (about 1.7 million people) are estimated to have been exposed to the virus.While Covid-19 remains a sometimes deadly and highly infectious disease, Chant said the figures reinforce what we already know: some people are better at dealing with the virus than others.
Indeed, European explorers who set off to chart flows to the “great inland sea” were surprised instead to discover a drought-stricken river – the Darling. The Guardian Thursday 4 June 2020 Opinion 20 Lawson’s 1891 poem, which followed one year after the largest flood, is used often to depict the naturally occurring extreme conditions of our rivers. Standards for healthy rivers are debated, but extraction of more than 20% of flows typically results in adverse changes to biodiversity and the benefits people derive from clean water.R Keller Kopf is a freshwater ecologist at Charles Sturt University.The public has been aghast. OPINION: Are we in rural Australia too soft?
Given the rising population density, housing and business costs in Melbourne and Sydney, maybe it’s time to revisit the Whitlam-era ideas of luring people and business outside the major cities?Banning cotton and rice and degrading farmers will not solve the problem.Given that less than 2% of all water pumped from the Murray-Darling goes to household consumption it’s hard not to sympathise with those who argue that corporate irrigators have something to do with water stress.This does not have to be the dirge of the Darling, regional communities or farming.
The biggest Murray cod – allegedly 114kg – was caught in 1902, during the federation drought in a tributary of the Darling, near Walgett.Unlike the fish, people and small farms spread throughout the Murray-Darling – a few lobbyists and several hundred rice and cotton irrigators, occupying less than 1% of the land, profit from using about 40% of all water extracted.But extreme conditions and fish kills are natural here in the “land of drought and flooding rains”, right?The shift to sustainable water and land-use practices requires visionary long-term planning and generous funding for regional communities. Between 1 and 2 per cent of Australia's population could be infected with Covid-19. Cubbie Station doesn’t pump water from rivers that flow through Walgett, nor has it reported harvesting water since April 2017.What will solve it is reducing total water entitlements for irrigation and increasing flows for rivers and wetlands.The best available science reviewed by the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists has recommend an increase in environmental flows, to a minimum of 3,200 GL per year to maintain healthy freshwater ecosystems.Environmental flows have expanded in many regions, but the Darling and northern-basin still seem to be a wild west of water extraction. "The ones we are finding from PCR testing (that looks for traces of the virus in the swabs), presumably are far more likely to be symptomatic and end up in hospital," he added.
There were eight deaths recorded on Friday, making it the state's deadliest day since the pandemic began.University of South Australia epidemiologist Professor Adrian Esterman told news.com.au "it would be a surprise" if that many people had been infected, and it would mean many might have never known they had coronavirus.