The summer of 2018 broke heat records across the world. It’s just the latest in a series of the lengthy heatwaves that have become a regular feature of our summers. Combined with low rainfall, they’re leading to debilitating droughts and catastrophic forest fires, from California and Cape Town, to Germany and even the UK.

When temperatures rise, it’s not just water that dries up, but jobs too. Without water, fewer crops grow, and fewer people are needed to tend to farms. For agricultural workers, many of them unskilled, this collapse in demand can be traumatic.

In response, the Australian state of Victoria is intervening to keep people in work. Its Drought Employment Program (DEP) provides work to unemployed or underemployed farm workers affected by the drought. Through it, they have access to an income while performing important environmental work for local communities.

As droughts become more common, it could provide a model for other places in the grip of heatwaves.

No dark clouds on the horizon

Farm labourers are often low-skilled, and therefore particularly vulnerable to the changing climate. While warmer temperatures can often lead to job opportunities emerging elsewhere in local economies, research shows that the low-skilled are often unable to take advantages of these.

It means that if there’s not enough work for them in any particular year, workers stand to lose out on work and wages. And this, in turn, can lead to poverty, and mental health problems.

“We’re creating worthwhile, regional job opportunities for drought affected agricultural workers"

Since 2014, Victoria has suffered from low rainfalls and high temperatures. It’s hit crop farmers in the state hard, reducing the amount they’re able to produce.

The government responded with a simple idea.

As crop yields dropped and demand for harvesting jobs fell Victoria set aside funding from a drought response fund to employ them to do environmental work in their local areas.

They would help sites to regenerate by watering them, building fences or bringing vegetation back to community spaces.

“Our experience during the millennium drought (1996-2010) and the more recent drought in North West Victoria (2015-17) has shown that employment programs are effective in using local community members in a paid capacity to undertake environmental projects” said a spokesperson from Victoria’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP).

“We’re creating worthwhile, regional job opportunities for drought-affected agricultural workers whose livelihoods have been impacted by Australia’s unpredictable climate.”

Participants are employed through the program on a part-time basis, to give them the flexibility to complete the cropping work that remains, and to make sure there’s enough work to go around.

And they’re able to learn and practice new skills. Working on environmental projects to regenerate land, or on cultural programs in small towns, they get exposure to work outside of agriculture.

The DEP is run by the DELWP in partnership with Catchment Management Authorities (CMAs), which are responsible for environmental and land planning in communities across the state. Thanks to the local knowledge of the CMAs, each community’s priorities can be fulfilled through the work, and workers can be assigned to positions based on their experience, skill and availability.

The results, both for the workers and the local communities, have been good. In an analysis of the program, one worker from the Wimmera CMA was pleased to be “doing some of the jobs that needed doing in our local towns that were not going to get done otherwise,” while another from the North Central CMA highlighted the mental health benefits.

“We met a lot of people like us in the same boat,” he said. “As well as the financial benefits, the program helped with our physical and mental wellbeing, which has taken a hit over the past few years. It gave us a purpose to get up each morning.”

In September 2018, the Victorian government announced that it would provide funding of AUS$5million (US$3.5million) of funding for a drought support package, AUS$1.2million (US$850,000) of which was earmarked for the drought employment program. Other agencies in Australia have expressed in interest in replicating it across the country. — Anoush Darabi

(Picture credit: Flickr/Jes)