Dry days down under: Australia and the world water crisis

• Nicholas Breyfogle
• Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective

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Image: Mundoo / flickr

19 March 2010For several years now, Australia, the driest inhabited continent, has been suffering perhaps the worst drought in its recorded history. Amidst disappearing rivers and empty dams, farmers have watched their fields go barren and their livestock perish, while urban dwellers face greater and greater restrictions on water use. Terrible wildfires have swept through the country, scorching millions of acres of land. The drought is challenging Australians' very idea of who they are as a people and their faith in the future. Australia is hardly alone with these problems, as much of the globe struggles with insufficient, polluted, oversubscribed, and increasingly expensive water. How successfully Australia responds to its current water woes will offer an important road map for others around the world. In this paper, historian Nicholas Breyfogle, puts the current Australian drought into historical perspective.
 
Origins is a free, non-commercial publication from the Public History Initiative and eHistory in Ohio State University's History Department. Each month, an academic expert analyzes a particular current issue - political, cultural, or social - in a larger, deeper historical context. In addition to the analysis provided in each month's feature, Origins also includes podcasts, images, maps, graphics, timelines, and other material to complement the article.

Image: Mundoo / flickr