Securing the future in a connected planet: the role of science

Dr Megan Clark, Science Alert 26 Nov 09;

For the first time in our history, science is making predictions of how our actions will affect the world 50 and 100 years from now.

In this future we face the reality that we are all connected. Our choices in one area, such as water, impact on other areas, such as food security.

Martin Luther King warned us that we are all joined through an “inescapable network of mutuality”. We are now beginning to understand what he really meant. We all want a prosperous and healthy society, but we face significant challenges to securing our food, water and energy needs in a world of finite resources.

We have significant pressures on global systems – such as population growth, rapid urbanisation and climate change. These national and global challenges are connected. They cannot be dealt with in isolation.

Individuals, communities, industry and nations are seeking to understand this connectivity and the inevitable trade-offs necessary to achieve a sustainable society.

Science must change if we are to help inform governments, communities and industry how choices in one area impact on another area – particularly in a world where water, carbon and biodiversity will have prices and markets.

I am now nine months into my new role as Chief Executive of CSIRO and I would like to share my vision of what you can expect of your national science organisation.

Climate change

You have been saturated with the fact that over the past several decades our climate has been changing. You also know climate change is not new. So what is the essence of what is different this time? Simply the rate of change.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are now well outside the range experienced during recent ice ages. They are now at values not experienced for millions of years. They are increasing at a rate we have not seen before.

One of the best indicators of this rate of change is sea level. We have been measuring sea level since 1870 and it has been rising about 10 times faster than the average rate of rise over the previous 2000 years. Since 1993 the average rate of rise is almost double the 20th century average.

All nations are connected in this change. So are our latest measurements confirming this rate of change? Yes. Let me give you just two examples.

First, our observations of ocean temperature off eastern Tasmania over the past 60 years have revealed that winter water temperatures were 1.5˚C above normal, due to strengthening of the southward-flowing East Australian Current. Sea urchins, normally found off eastern mainland Australia, are now happily colonising Tasmanian waters and millions of them are eating their way through extensive kelp forests and threatening the biodiversity and key abalone and rock lobster fisheries of the region.

The second example is rainfall. Our modelling is increasingly predicting reduced rainfall in south-eastern Australia, the main generating area for the River Murray. The predictions range from little change in the mean annual rainfall up to a decline of 15 per cent for each degree of global warming. Such a rainfall reduction could mean a more than 35 per cent reduction in run-off as the rain soaks into dry soils.

Run-off is what feeds our rivers. The Murray–Darling system has more than 50 per cent of all irrigated land in the country. It is linked to our food security.

All our communities need better predictions. We are making increasingly accurate and granular observations of what is happening.

We have 60 ocean probes, three ships taking continuous measurements, four seagliders, and satellites taking physical and biological measurements of our deep Southern Ocean. We have deployed a $1 million measuring system south-west of Tasmania that will monitor the carbon cycle in the top 400 metres of the Southern Ocean.

With the Bureau of Meteorology, we track every single rain event over the Murray–Darling Basin and look at its intensity, how much water it has, how frequent these rain events are and measure the run-off. We are working to understand where the water is coming from and how much will flow because this information is critical to future decisions.

We are also contributing on a global scale. More than 100 of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists are Australian, and more than 20 are from CSIRO. The work they and their international colleagues are doing measuring temperature, acidity and currents in places like the deep Southern Ocean is a vital part of the emerging global picture of climate change.

Food production

One area that we have to adapt to quickly is the production of food. In the next 50 years we will need to produce as much food as has been consumed over our entire human history.

Humans have met this challenge once before – from 1960 to 2000 world food production doubled through a combination of new technology and investment in agriculture. But this time two things are different.

First, we will need to achieve this where carbon and water have a price. We can no longer simply clear more forest and farm even more marginal land.

Second, this is happening at a time when we are seeing the greatest migration of our species to urban centres.

We will see profound shifts in the trade and transport of food. We are already seeing the impact on global, sea-borne trade of food. Cereal exports, the highest volume globally traded food commodity, have risen at a rate double that of population growth. Trade volumes of milk, meat and beans have risen at even faster rates.

Australia has a strong interest in global food security. We produce 93 per cent of all food consumed in Australia, one per cent of all food consumed in the world and three per cent of the global sea-borne trade. So right now we feed 60 million people.

Increase in global sea-borne trade of food presents an opportunity for Australia but Australian agriculture is also highly exposed to climate change – we have significant constraints on irrigation water availability. Our agriculture is also 16 per cent of our national greenhouse gas.

Our science has potential for Australia to produce an even greater proportion of the sea-borne trade. We are making wonderful and exciting scientific developments in new drought-tolerant crop varieties, high-yielding wheat, greater nitrogen-use efficiency and improved grain nutritional benefits.

CSIRO’s role

Living in a world where carbon has a value and irrigation water is restricted means new choices and trade-offs.

At the start of the 21st century, it was clear that the Murray–Darling was in trouble. A whole-of-basin water assessment was required. CSIRO was given the challenge in November 2006 to lead the world’s first rigorous assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on surface and groundwater availability across a major river basin.

It was the most comprehensive and technically challenging water-modelling project ever undertaken in Australia, and possibly the world. It provides governments, industry and communities with an unprecedented level of water information to guide their future planning and investment.

We are working with our research partners to extend this work to the river basins of northern Australia, south-west Western Australia and Tasmania. This means Australia will lead the world in building a national model of its water.

This is exactly what a national research organisation should do – bring together all the smartest research and researchers across the nation to catalyse a national response to some of the biggest challenges we face.

I believe we need to similarly take on the challenge of building a national picture of our carbon footprint and assessment of future energy options. The approach will require not only the best multi-disciplinary teams of scientists from CSIRO and our universities, but also our best economists from places like Treasury and the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), Federal and State policy makers, the community and industry.

This platform will be vital in supporting Australia’s need for new national infrastructure suited to a new low-carbon economy.

The role of CSIRO is to provide the science and help catalyse the development of the ‘integrated assessment’ platform that will be needed for good decision-making. Such a comprehensive picture will allow us to achieve maximal emissions reduction while maintaining economic growth and prosperity.

As we adjust to a world where carbon has a value, adopting a low-carbon pathway will require Australia to look at its land and water resources in a fundamentally different way. We stand ready as an organisation to help Australia tackle these very difficult assessments.

We cannot secure Australia’s future unless our science works on challenges that face all nations.

CSIRO aims to be one of the most respected R&D organisations in the world. Our strategy remains to focus on these major challenges that face humankind and our nation. We will do this through our 10 National Research Flagships.

We will continue to step up to the plate to work with universities and other research agencies and organisations like the Bureau of Meteorology to integrate our knowledge into comprehensive pictures of our national water resources, carbon footprint and our biodiversity.

We aim to make an impact in three areas: a sustainable environment (which I’ve discussed), the community and industry.

Our communities need help facing the challenges of the future. We will continue to develop foods that can improve health, provide nutrition advice to children and adults, and help make sense of how to make a difference in a carbon world.

Three targets

We will continue to bring a cross-disciplinary approach to tackle three of the largest health issues that face our nation – obesity, Alzheimer’s disease and colorectal cancer.

Australians trust CSIRO to bring excellent science to help them with the challenges of today and tomorrow. But these challenges are not just of interest to governments and communities. We are seeing increased investment from our industry partners as well.

We will help Australian businesses access the breadth and depth of our organisation and our networks to be more competitive. We are helping CSL develop safe vaccines, BHP Billiton to better understand the performance of products in downstream processing, Telstra enable the house of the future and AGL build the power industry of the future.

To build whole new industries we will continue to build platform and breakthrough technologies such as wireless LAN, which is now in more than a billion wireless devices; next-generation space technology; polymers to build printable electronics and solar cells; and gene technology for new drugs, proteins and plants.

As an organisation with goals and values that go beyond our science, we know we will be successful when our people always go home safely at night and share a sense of discovery; our collaborators and partners realise lasting value from our science and describe working with us as a pleasure; and we remain a trusted adviser to the people of Australia.

We remain committed to the integrity of our science, which has been a foundation for CSIRO since our beginnings more than 80 years ago.

We live in a connected world. Science needs to work on challenges that face all nations to secure a future for humankind. Only then can we secure a future for Australia.

(This article is an edited version of a recent address to the National Press Club.)

Dr Megan Clark FTSE, Chief Executive, CSIRO, is a member of the St Vincent’s Hospital Foundation Board, the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, and the Automotive Industry Innovation Council. She began her career as a mine geologist and subsequently worked in mineral exploration, mine geology, research and development management, venture capital and technical strategy areas with Western Mining Corporation for 15 years. More recently she was Vice-President Technology and Vice-President, Health, Safety, Environment, Community and Sustainability with BHP Billiton. Dr Clark served on the Expert Panel for the Review of the National Innovation System.