Reef Catchments Mackay Whitsunday Inc has progressed its ‘Managing Climate Change’ project, assessing the impacts of sugar cane production in the Mackay Whitsunday region and the efficacy of Reef Rescue targets to deliver improved reef water quality under a more variable climate.
Reef Catchments’ Will Higham said “The project will be completed by January 2010, and will lay out a number of recommendations to improve management policy and practices in the sugar cane industry in this region. The industry will then be able to work with canegrowers to effectively mitigate climate change impacts and continue to maintain their livelihoods in the most environmentally sustainable way.” Will said that specific research findings and knowledge produced by the project will then become a template for adaptation in the sugarcane industry, Australia-wide.
In this project, there has been an attempt to examine a comprehensive range of future climate uncertainties, especially extreme events, to define potential impacts of sugarcane production on key natural resource conditions (especially water quality export off farm). This has been achieved through extensive modelling of three key potential future climatic scenarios:
· significantly warmer and drier conditions by 2030;
· modestly warmer and wetter conditions by 2030; and
· mid-range warmer and drier conditions by 2030.
One of the primary focuses of this project is to discuss the impact of climate variability and the benefits of A and B class practices (management practices above and beyond current industry standards) with groups of canegrowers. “The first thing canefarmers will want to know is the impact of climate variability on yield. By presenting yield information we will be able to better engage them in the development of communication materials that describe the benefits of the more sustainable A and B class practices over the C class practices, which are now the industry level,” said Will.
In fact in 2008, C class practices represented over 75% of industry adoption. “As we all know, adoption is the key to change, so we believe the scene is now set for the canegrowers to take the next step and adopt the A and B class practices rapidly.”
The industry standard C class practices were used as a benchmark to measure improved management actions against throughout the ‘Managing Climate Change’ project. “Without inclusion of the C class practices in the study, we would be unable to quantify the relative benefits achieved by A and B practices in assisting growers to become more resilient to future climate variability,” Will said.
This project will also be linked to Reef Rescue decision-making, highlighting which activities should be targeted for future investment. Reef Catchments currently plays an active role in facilitating the Great Barrier Reef Wide Sugar Working Group. “Once we have the results of the ‘increased variability’ scenarios, we will present them and then, using the cross regional communication process, influence the inclusion of these results in the Reef Rescue investment strategies going forward.”
This project has been conducted in partnership with CSIRO. A progress report has already been submitted to Land & Water Australia, Climate Variability section.
Photograph by John Higham
