Introduction by Croakey: Rousing stories about the importance of the River Murray/Millewa for health and wellbeing were shared at the recent 15th National Conference for Rural and Remote Allied Health on the lands of the Latji Latji and Barkindji peoples in Mildura.
Below, Marie McInerney reports for Croakey Conference News Service on how social workers are responding to impacts of climate change on health and wellbeing.
Marie McInerney writes:
A survey about the role of the River Murray in the lives of people in the Victorian regional centre of Mildura has highlighted its vital importance to the health and wellbeing of residents.
Dr Heather Downey, Senior Lecturer in Social Work at La Trobe University’s Albury Wodonga campus, told delegates at the recent 15th National Conference for Rural and Remote Allied Health in Mildura that a third of respondents would even consider moving away from the region if and when water becomes more scarce.
Downey said her survey about the Murray — or Millewa as it is known by the local Latji Latji and Barkindji peoples — also found that local residents feel marginalised in water debates, where most of the focus is on the economic imperative of the irrigated agricultural sector.
Presenting her findings of the ‘Green Social Work Study of Environmental and Social Justice in Mildura, a unique Australian river community’, Downey said the research has important lessons for social workers who, despite “coming late to the party”, now understand their ethical responsibility to engage in climate action.
The research, which has since been replicated in the Albury-Wodonga region, also sends important messages to health and other sectors, and those that fund them, as they struggle to recruit and retain regional workforces.
“A third of our participants … let us know they would consider moving away from Mildura if water became even more scarce than it is now,” Downey said. “That’s very impactful in a reasonably small rural community because it not only impacts social relationships but also recognised workforce shortages.”
The study, which used an environmental justice perspective, contributes a critical element to water debates by examining the “cultural, recreational, and environmental meanings of water” for residents, she said.
Green and blue spaces
Mildura, 550 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, plays a critical role in Murray/Darling Basin food bowl production. A major producer of grapes, citrus, almonds, olives and vegetables, it has the driest climate in Victoria, with lowest mean annual rainfall of 295 millilitres and has a long history of irrigation.
Downey undertook her study in 2020, when the region had just emerged from one of the most severe droughts on record and amid concerns about downstream effects of a 270-kilometre pipeline connecting Broken Hill to the river at nearby Wentworth.
While there’s been much rain and extensive flooding since, climate projections for the “desert oasis” town are for far less water, which not only threatens food production, but also green spaces, like gardens and nature reserves, and “blue spaces” like rivers, lakes and creeks, she said.
Downey said the study of 33 Mildura people was small and limited. Respondents self-selected to participate and included just one First Nations person. That’s despite First Nations people making up around four percent of the Mildura population and playing a big role in river restoration work through organisations like the First People of the Millewa-Mallee Aboriginal Organisation, which provided the Welcome to Country for #SARRAH2024.
However, Downey said the study offered important insights into what the Murray meant, particularly to non-Indigenous people, including its role “within community and individual health and identity, with all considering it as fundamental to life”.
The follow-up Albury-Wodonga study had stronger representation of First Nations people, who “really talked about the river being an ancestor” and of the “incredible importance” of its health to their own, she told Croakey.
For many Mildura respondents, the important water issue was being able to have a green lawn, valued for a sense of self-esteem as well as for emotional and physical health benefits and “respite from the harsh environment”.
“It appears that in this desert oasis community, green lawns play an important role in distinguishing the town from its arid, dusty surrounds,” Downey said.
Interestingly, people who responded to the Albury-Wodonga study, which has a much higher rainfall, considered green lawns “to be a waste of water”, she said.
But while Mildura people valued the river’s proximity and role in their lives, they felt their voices were not heard in water debates, she said.
Water scarcity issues in Australia are compounded by a dominant culture that privileges the commodification of water for agricultural purposes over the voice of community members and the environment, she said.
Mildura residents identified three main threats to water access: irrigation farming of crops like cotton and rice that are not suited for dryland Australia, climate change, and poor federal government leadership and action on water conservation.
Impact of climate change
Downey has previously explored meanings of water for farming communities, and has just been part of a literature review on the impacts of climate change on people who use alcohol and other drugs, particularly when they are forced by climate disasters to evacuate and be without supports.
She also led a pilot study on the impact of climate change on Albury-Wodonga businesses, organisations, and clubs with direct and indirect involvement in freshwater tourism, including in the wake of the 2019-2020 bushfires which brought smoke hazards, pollution in the water, and heightened algae levels in Lake Hume.
Addressing rural and remote allied health colleagues, Downey said the work highlights the importance of environmental justice to wellbeing and “social work’s ethical responsibility to respond to environmental issues”.
All social work roles “offer potential to work at the community level and facilitate opportunities for people to come together and discuss diverse meanings of water”, she said.
Social workers have skills to enable people to express diverse values in safe and inclusive spaces and to support communities to navigate and mediate emotions and tensions, so an appropriate social work response could be to help people in the community find common ground, she said.
Although social workers generally know their communities well, she said their practice might be enhanced by firm engagement with local First Nations communities, water providers, environmental groups, and agricultural industry boards, to explore local water cultures and concerns, vulnerable groups, and opportunities for “advocacy and activism”.
Blue and green spaces might also be appropriate sites for individual, family and group counselling, while community gardens could provide big benefits for people experiencing social isolation and physical, mental and emotional wellbeing issues, she said.
Downey pointed out the potential for grassroots action, saying rural communities had united around deep concerns for the consequences of water scarcity in recent crises. Examples of grassroots action include the Dharriwaa Elders Group-led response to the drying up of the Barwon and Namoi rivers in Walgett, and local community responses to a series of fish kills on the Darling River in the summer of 2018-19.
“Social work and social welfare has been getting a lot better, but it’s been a little bit late to the party around climate change, and I’m trying to work as hard as I can to redress that,” she said.
Watch this interview with Dr Heather Downey
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