“All climate change scenarios will have significant risks on water security for Australian agriculture," said National Irrigators Council CEO Zara Lowien.
“Farmers are adapting every day to changing climate, but can only adapt so far, water security is critical.
"The outlook modelling scenarios found the basin will be both wetter and drier, with more extreme conditions with varying impacts and level of uncertainty around the Basin.
“We are concerned the document has over-generalised headlines, but when you look at the detail, there are a lot of unknowns and uncertainty.
“That's not to dismiss the work, rather that when government responds to it, they need to consider its limitations, which are very evident in the report."
The MDBA's Advisory Committee on Social, Economic and Environmental Sciences earlier raised concerns about "avoiding over-generalising outcomes across the diverse environments and communities of the basin" and the "need to include information on the potential impacts of climate change on water entitlements and allocations".
"We need to have evidence-based conversations across stakeholders on how we can best enhance water security for all users as much as possible, and how we can best share the risks when the water is simply not available," Ms Lowien said.
The Outlook identified that allocations of entitlement water are expected to reduce as total average water availability decreases, recognising existing systems to manage climate change and impacts on irrigators.
"In Australia, we do have systems to manage water-sharing for changing climate, but you can only manage water when it's there and as we know, sometimes there just isn't any water," said Ms Lowien.
Australia's irrigated agriculture sector supplies 93 per cent of Australian fruits and nuts and 83 per cent of vegetables.
