Although the Murray-Darling River covers only about 14% of Australia's irrigated land, 50% of Australia's sheep and 25% of Australia's cattle rely on this source. Also, 40% of the nation's rice crop and 80% of its canned fruit product relies on the Murray-Darling River Complex. In all, three-quarters of Australia's water comes from the Murray-Darling River (Hussainy, p. 205).

Of course there are conflicts when so much is at stake. For one, the river carries about 2.5 tons of sale into South Australia "every minute," Hussainy writes. Inflows of saline groundwater are attributable to the problem -- and also, the removal of "native vegetation" and irrigation causes the salt to become a problem. When the native vegetation is replace with shallow rooted crops, it is bad ecologically. The authors say that "sustainable development ecology should be regarded as part of economics" but the "myopic view of technocrats" views ecology and...
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