Ben Lyons at Yale University

THE head of one of eight drought hubs says a recent United Nations workshop has shown that Australia is leading the world in managing for dry seasons.

Associate professor Ben Lyons from the Southern Queensland and Northern New South Wales Hub and University of Southern Qld travelled to on of the United States most prestigious tertiary institutions, Yale University, with David Phelps from James Cook University’s Townsville-based hub to discuss a global effort to better manage drought.

The meeting was held by the UN’s Convention to Combat Desertification, which paid for the pair to attend.

Assoc Prof Lyons said Australia’s proactive management of drought had the country decades ahead of the rest of the world.

“The UN wants to move to better preparing for drought, we started that process a bit earlier in Australia and we are moving faster than a lot of other countries,” he said.

“They are very interested in the dedicated fund we have, being the Future Drought Fund and they are interested in how we are organising things.

“We do agriculture in a variable climate really well, and Qld has the most variable climate in modern agriculture across the world. How we deal with that is something that other countries want to learn from.”

Different skills employed in drought strategy

Assoc Prof Lyons said a range of different skills were being used to develop drought strategy – some from left field. He said the UN team were looking at using the School of Architecture at Yale University to create drought indicators.

“It is not obvious when you first hear it, but you have to remember that architects are designers and they are looking at designing indicators and organising all this information in a way that humans interact with it – if you think about it, a building is something humans interact with viscerally,” he said.

“They are not drought experts, that is the first thing they will tell you, but they are really good at organising information and data – which I am quite interested in.”

Another skill that has been employed is a team from NASA, which has been using satellite technology to monitor surface water and artesian water.

Potential for drought hubs to add value

The eight drought hubs were announced by the former Coalition Government in 2021, in a bid to better coordinate both levy-paid and Government-funded research projects.

Promoting adoption and commercialisation of research is also part of the goal, with each hub set up with “nodes” in regional areas which have extension officers.

“It has been a startup agency, so it has had its teething problems. But I think now it can really start to deliver a lot of content,” Assoc Prof Lyons said.

“The Government says it will fund them until 2032, we definitely have funding at the SQNNSW hub until 2028, now it is just a matter of getting out there. You will see and hear plenty more productive work from them in the next 12 months, which is the intention.”