Australia’s population growth is driving water.

Sustainable Population Australia’s (SPA) report Big thirsty Australia: how population growth threatens our water security and sustainability, 25 November 2024, outlines how population growth is driving water demand.

Population growth is coalescing climate change and threatening Australia’s water security. Australia is the driest inhabited continent in the world. Australian cities are becoming vulnerable to extended droughts exacerbated by population growth.

The NSW government may have to turn to desalination of seawater to augment water supply to perpetuate population growth. Yet desalination is hugely expensive and energy intensive. Per litre of water, desalination is at least 2.5 times the cost of rain-fed dam water, which means much higher water bills for households and businesses.

Australia’s population is expected to grow by another 13 million in the next 40 years.

Sustainable Population Australia is warning unless Australia’s population is stabilised it will create an unsustainable water future.

• accept population growth projections and not challenge them?
• not challenge population growth projections when they must fund the infrastructure and extra water
• recognised that population is not inevitable but a policy choice

Sustainable Population Australia national president Peter Strachan argues that “It would be far simpler, safer, greener and cheaper to stabilise our population, by bringing annual net migration back to the pre-2005 level of around 70,000, which is what it was before successive recent governments’ foolish experiment with hyper-growth. Then we could direct our investments to fixing existing ageing water infrastructure and putting more water into greening our cities and regenerating wetlands”.

Sustainable Population Australia full report “Big thirsty Australia: how population growth threatens our water security and sustainability”  can be READ HERE

Sustainable Population Australia discussion paper series can be FOUND HERE

Sustainable Population Australia, “Population growth weakening Australia’s water security: new report, 25 November 2024”, Media Releases 2024