Socioeconomic impacts of climatic variability

As outlined in Section 1 of this case study, climatic variability is a fundamental fact of life of Australian agriculture. It and its impacts have already been the subject of reviews from several other points of view (see, e.g., Williams, 1946; Rutherford, 1950; Everest and Moule, 1952; Anon., 1966; Campbell, 1966; Anon., 1967; Anon., 1968; Lovett, 1973; McQuigg, 1975; Chapman, 1976; Butler and Doesell, 1979; Heathcote and Thorn, 1979; Young and Wilson, 1979; Heathcote, 1983). However, the observation of Campbell (1958, p. 3) that “one cannot but be impressed by the extremely limited progress which we, as a people, have made .... in coming to terms with the most insidious and pervasive characteristic of our climate — its variability” is still cogent. The objective in this section is to undertake a broad review that spans agriculture from farm to the macro-economy and spans climate generally rather than one that addresses only drought — the focus of Section 4