Water Justice in the Murray Darling - a new campaign by the Barmah-Millewa Collective
Briefing and Discussion Night
Are you interested in campaigning with us to restore environmental flows and Indigenous water rights in the Murray-Darling?
Traditional Owners and the environment have been dispossessed of water in the Murray-Darling Basin, causing ongoing degradation to the landscape and preventing Traditional Owners from carrying out cultural obligations to care for country. Ecological catastrophe is striking the Basin’s remaining natural ecosystems from the Coorong to the vast river red gum forests of the Riverina.
This month's flooding in northern Victoria brings a brief reprieve but one wet winter will not solve the problem. In between the wet years are drier ones that used to see small-to-medium floods. Instead there are no floods at all, and rivers are artifically reduced to a trickle. Even this season, ecosytems will not get everything they need. Water will cover less of the floodplain and stay there for a shorter time it would otherwise. Tens of thousands of waterbirds will setup nests but many of them will have to abandon their young when the floodwaters recede unnaturally quickly because so much water is held back in the vast dams of Hume, Eildon and Dartmouth.
Over the coming decade we have a real opportunity – and probably our last – to turn this around. After years of campaigning by Traditional Owners and conservationists, the Commonwealth government is driving a massive reform process that should see the Basin’s water managed on an ecologically sustainable basis for the first time since colonisation.
But many barriers remain, at their foremost the failure of the Australian community to grapple with the historic theft of Indigenous water.
In the next stage of our campaign, the Barmah-Millewa Collective will be working with Traditional Owners and local communities to build support for environmental and Indigenous water rights, so that throughout the Murray-Darling communities thrive, biodiversity flourishes and our rivers are clean and healthy.
We would like you to join with us in doing this work. We are looking for committed volunteers, connected cyberactivists, people to attend our community events… there are many ways you can be a part of the campaign. To get the ball rolling we’re holding an information night for volunteers and supporters on Wednesday 29th September and we'd love it if you came along:
RSVP is appreciated: barmah@foe.org.au
- so we can make sure there’s enough food to snack on.
About the Barmah-Millewa Collective
The Barmah-Millewa Collective shares a vision of healthy country, where biodiversity and bush tucker flourish; where the land, rivers and wetlands are clean and healthy; and where Traditional Owners enjoy their inherent rights to care for country and enjoy its produce.
In 2001 we joined the Yorta Yorta in their campaign to protect the world’s largest river red gum forest, Barmah-Millewa, and negotiate a joint land management agreement with government. Our alliance grew to include many people and groups and our ambitions to cover all of the Riverina red gum forests. Together we achieved stunning victories in December 2008 and May 2009 as first Victoria and then NSW moved to create over 200,000ha of new red gum national parks and protected areas, many of which will be co-managed or handed back to Traditional Owners.
Building on this success, the Collective now collaborates with Traditional Owner Nations throughout the Murray-Darling Basin to protect and care for this unique and threatened landscape. Our current priorities are supporting Traditional Owners in the management of the new red gum parks, and achieving recognition of Indigenous and environmental water rights across the Basin.
Contact Details
email: barmah@foe.org.au
phone: 9419 8700
visit/post: 312 Smith St/PO Box 222, Fitzroy, Victoria, 3065