Stanley is a tiny town with a population of 370 in the north-east region of the southern mainland Australian state of Victoria. Wealthy during the gold mining boom of the nineteenth century, the region is now largely reliant on apple and nut growing for income. In late August 2018, Stanleyâlike much of Australiaâwas experiencing drought, and facing a summer of soaring temperatures, dangerous bushfires and water restrictions .
Even without the extreme form of politics over climate change that has played out in Australia over the last two decadesâthe country has had seven prime ministers in eleven years, with climate change and energy policies implicated in each âcoupâ (Butler 2017)âwater has always been a political issue for the driest inhabited continent. Water restrictions are not uncommon for residents of major cities, particularly in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, which sits at the mouth of the almost 3500-kilometre-long Murray-Darling river system and is last in line for the water. Rural dwellers across Australia are often forced to buy in water to refill the tanks connected to roofs when there has been no rain. Historically, whoever has had access to underground aquifers, streams, rivers and dams, from which water can be diverted to irrigate crops or pasture, has been a major determiner of wealth in Australia.
New versions of this wealth have emerged in the last two decades, driven by the buying and selling of water rights. Across the country, new irrigation schemes are leading to the conversion of properties from livestock grazing with its volatile prices to higher-yielding and more reliable crops for ever-nearer and rapidly expanding Asian markets. Largely in response to the near draining of parts of the Murray-Darling basin, national policies have been introduced to limit access to surface water. There are no caps on groundwater (aquifers accessed by bores), however, which is a growing commodity and, inevitably, a new source of conflict.
This is what happened in Stanley. In 2013, a newcomer âblew inâ (Wright 2018), buying a small property and orchard in the area, which also came with substantial water rights . While the general principle underlying water rights in Australia is that the site where water is accessed and the site where it ends up will be connected hydrologically (White and Nelson 2018), in this case the new owner was granted permission by the regional planning authority to access 19 million litres of aquifer water a year via a 60-metre-deep bore to sell as bottled water. The water was trucked through the small town to the regional centre of Albury, about 60 kilometres away, to a bottling plant owned by Asahi Beverages, the Australian subsidiary of Asahi Breweries, which is at the core of the giant Tokyo-based Asahi Group Holdings. Asahi Group Holding reports annual total sales across its alcohol, soft drinks and food arms of over 1700 billion yen (or US $15 billion). From its famous Phillip Stark-designed golden corporate headquarters in Shibuya, Asahi has 147 subsidiaries and 95 plants worldwide, largely in Europe, Australia and South-East Asia, with 14.5% of its total sales in its overseas businesses (Asahi 2018).
The problem for the local protesters, including the shire mayor, and one they hoped the courts would agree with when they began what turned into a four-year legal battle, was not only that the from-and-to hydrological connection had been broken in Stanley, but so too had the from-and-to community connection with place. Agricultural activity, sustained by access to water, was the key to sustaining the town, protesters claimed. They framed bottled water as having no âvalueâ or âmeritâ, as âsquanderingâ the areaâs most valuable resources (ABC 7.30 2018). Such framing is not unique to the Stanley conflict. Further north, on the border of the states of New South Wales and Queensland, another dispute has been described as âdividing the local communityâ (ABC 7.30 2018), while communities in the United States, Canada and Europe have also clashed with the bottled water industry, including the residents of the French spa town of Vittelâa name now more famous internationally for the bottled water that is produced there than the locality itselfâwho have accused Nestle of âselling so much of their water to the rest of the world that they barely have enough left for themselvesâ (White and Nelson 2018).
The various court casesâwhich the Stanley community campaigners eventually lost leaving them with an AU$90,000 billâbecame fully integrated into the protest strategy. When the Supreme Court of Victoria determined not to allow the campaignâs appeal against earlier court rulings, it created space within mainstream news media for protesters to widen the framing of the debate by pushing for policy change within Australia and to reframe the debate as a social justice issue with international relevance. For example, Ed Tyrie, chairman of Stanley Rural Community Inc., called on parliament to change regulations to prevent water mining, claiming: âIt fails us and all Victorians when a private company is lawfully allowed to take groundwater and sell it for use as bottled water at a significant wholesale price to a multinational corporation, Asahi Beverages-Schweppes, without any measurable, meaningful dividend for the environment and for our communityâ (Wahlquist 2018).
It was the cost ruling that prompted the intervention of an international political organisation, SumOfUs, the âonline communityâ âfighting for people over profitsâ and âwhich exists to put bad corporations back in their placeâ. The US-based organisation is funded largely by individuals and donations, and its âconnectiveâ online campaign activities are supported by a strong cross-media strategy that includes issuing media releases on its activities (SumOfUs 2018a). This builds the type of news media visibility witnessed in the Stanley case, initiated when signups to an online petition (each âsignatureâ is described by SumOfUs as an individual âactionâ) reached 120,000 and spread across a wide range of news outlets in 2018. The framing of the dispute in the online campaign was familiar, with tankers ârolling upâ to risk the livelihoods of the âtiny communityâ.
For campaigners, the notion of a transnational community of concern became the key framing device. Stanley, for example, was: âin a David versus Goliath battle with the multinational beverages company, but communities around the world are facing the challenge of âwater mining ââ (Wood 2018). Familiar points of reference were provided for distant supporters: to âthe small town of Osceolaâ in Michigan âfighting off a lawsuit from Swiss giant NestlĂ© which pays just $200 a year to pump millions of litres of water from the near townâs water reservesâ to the ânine-year battle in Cascade Locks, Oregon, killing off NestlĂ©âs plans to start pumping thereâ (SumOfUs 2018b).
While the campaign remained targeted, with the petition aimed at âshowing Asahi executives that consumers also care a great deal about where water comes fromâ (Wood 2018), campaign leader Ed Tyrie clearly laid out the relationship when he said, âAsahi is responsible for the problem in this case so our campaign will be a multinational approach to a multinational problemâ (OâShea and Somerville 2018). This, he said, âis not just a problem for Stanley anymore, itâs a problem for the whole worldâ (OâShea and Somerville 2018).
The View from Here
This is a book about âhereâ. âHereâ refers to a location that is defined by our presence, our awareness of place and environment. Sometimes, as per the deep roots of the word, this means being physically in the same space. âI live hereâ. âMy home is hereâ. âI am hereâ. âI belong hereâ. Or to a shared moment or observation. âIt ends hereâ. âHere it isâ. Yet, in modern use, the word also connects us to elsewhere. Point to a map: âIt is happening hereâ. Display an image: âYou can see it hereâ. Pull up a website: âLook, hereâ. Tweet: âI donât like what is being done hereâ.
The connection between people and environment is changing. As more governments, companies and individuals scan the globe for access to primary resources such as minerals and timber, for food, power and water, and for destinations for work, holidays and homes, pressures on places and communities grow. At the same time, global environmental risksâmost notably, climate changeâproduce new networks and unfamiliar forms of politics. We know that media and communications are integral to this change. They interact with the geographically diverse groups and individuals that now seek to influence the negotiations and decisions that affect often far away landscapes and communities. Together, they push and puncture the boundaries that contain the âlocalâ and distort the form we apply to the âglobalâ. Consciousness of and empathy for other places is reconfigured by knowledge of shared risks and impact, even by a sense of belonging. âCommunities of concern â are evoked that transcend local places and national boundaries. And they protest.
Across the world, protests are occurring that are planted in the local but are also enacted globally. From the Papua New Guineans living beside the worldâs largest gold mine, who through Australian lawyers and news media claim the jobs they were promised in exchange for their land and lifestyles never eventuated (Blakkarly 2018), to the US and Canadian communities forming to fight pipeline expansion driven by the continued growth of oil exports (Murphy 2018), to the mass rallies that accompany global initiatives to limit cli...