Our research showed that personalizing the health impacts is likely to resonate with viewers more than large scale impacts without identifiable individuals.
WHAT IT SHOWS: Australian farmer Ash Whitney stands on the verandah of his house on his drought-affected property located in the Goolhi area on the outskirts of the north-western New South Wales town of Gunnedah, Australia, on October 3, 2019. Whitney has just a few remaining stock on his property, and is having to seek work elsewhere until the worst drought he has experienced hopefully ends. The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has declared the ongoing drought across the Murray Darling Basin to be the worst on record, with current conditions now exceeding the Federation Drought (1895-1903), the WWII drought (1937-1947) and the Millennium drought (1997-2009). The Federal and NSW Governments announced a new drought emergency funding plan on Sunday 13 October, with $1billion to go to water infrastructure for rural and regional communities impacted by the devastating drought in NSW, including a $650m upgrade of Wyangala Dam in the NSW central west and a $480m new Dungowan Dam near Tamworth. However, critics of the plan are calling for more immediate solutions as well as more environmental checks around the dams to ensure they don’t further impact the health of the river systems.