Australia's Northern Territory Unprepared For Climate Impacts, Former Senior Bureaucrat Warns

[hatrack]

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Addressing a climate change forum today in Darwin, Dr Gerritsen warned of the factors that will challenge efforts to tackle global warming. "We have two separate populations with two separate sets of interests, and a complete lack of common purpose.

"The Territory Government basically doesn't have the financial resources to organise society on a large scale particularly say in the Aboriginal communities to deal with the challenges posed to natural resource management by climate change."

Dr Gerritsen says investment should be distributed more widely to allow remote out stations to become leaders in natural resource management. "If you are dealing with coastal salination, invasion of exotic pests, flora and fauna type pests, you need people on country. So it's very important to have them on country in a sustainable fashion, being able to contribute to the sort of natural resources management challenges that climate change is going to bring."

Earlier, the forum heard that the Top End could become drier due to climate change.

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/05/2181042.htm?site=darwin