Dry Days Down Under: Australia and the World Water Crisis

Origins at eHistory

For 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. This month historian Nicholas Breyfogle puts the current Australian drought into historical perspective.