Groundwater governance: Addressing core concepts and challenges

Abstract

With decreasing aquifer levels, increasing groundwater pollution, inequitable access, and generally poor management outcomes, better groundwater governance has been put forward as a recipe to address these challenges worldwide. Existing recommendations focus on improved legal frameworks, monitoring and control of access and abstraction through permits or formal rights. In addition, decentralized water management, enforcement of regulations, and supply‐side technological solutions are seen as cornerstone components of good groundwater governance systems. However, until now, these approaches have generally failed to reconcile the fundamental dynamics and properties of groundwater as a natural resource and of governance as a social and political phenomenon. This has caused a disregard for local to planetary boundaries, power dynamics, and intra‐ and intergenerational inequalities in access to benefits from groundwater. As the current general notion of good groundwater governance is limited, solutions put forward are also partial and do not encompass the wider challenges affecting groundwater governance, in effect replacing sustainable management goals and policy for governance as a process. This paper takes a particular look at the Middle East and North Africa and agricultural groundwater use for irrigation to constructively redefine groundwater governance and fully address the multilayered and multifaceted core challenges of groundwater governance. Equally, the paper puts forward a new conceptual thinking that will help support the effective development of governance‐based solutions to achieve sustainable, socially acceptable, resilient and equitable resource use. This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Planning Water Human Water > Water Governance

What Water are We Really Pumping? The Nature and Extent of Surface and Groundwater Substitutability in Australia and Implications for Water Management Policies

“…Water markets only exist within institutions and structures that allow and govern the transfer of water, and without strong institutions, market failure will occur and inequality issues will exist Wheeler and Garrick 2020). Hence, we agree with Closas and Villholth (2020) that strong groundwater governance studies must appropriately combine biophysical principles with sociopolitical realities to understand how and why extraction and management happen. Given the interdependence and substitutability that has been identified between different water sources, we suggest the many improvements in water governance that are needed in the MDB (and indeed around the world in many areas) include: (i) greater use of satellite and thermal imaging and measurement of all types of water extractions and how their extraction is changing over time; (ii) developing strong regional water resource plans to cover all types of water sources; (iii) increased metering, monitoring and enforcement; (iv) improved water hydrology and connectivity scientific knowledge; and (v) improved water trade products, appropriately designed and adaptable to account for changing human behaviour and other unintended consequences.…”

“…Poor understanding of the relationship between surface and groundwater resources and imperfect knowledge about drivers of irrigator behaviour can lead to ineffective water management policies (Zhang 2007;Famiglietti et al 2011;Kuwayama and Brozovi c 2013), leading to a call for the need for increased groundwater governance principles (e.g. Closas and Villholth 2020). Indeed, although there has been increasing emphasis on decentralization of natural resource management-with water markets increasingly encouraged for both surface and groundwater-many have also written that, for markets to be truly effective, there are many critical institutional and hydrological fundamentals to avoid market failure (Grafton et al 2012;.…”

Beyond rules and norms: Heterogeneity, ubiquity, and visibility of groundwaters

“…Other scholars anticipated that the economics of supply and demand would drive an evolutionary transition from development to management as groundwater becomes scarce and those who retain access to it build regulatory institutions to ensure their continued control over the resource (Shah et al, 2003, cited in Hoogesteger, 2018, p. 554). All agree, however, that for the well‐being of all involved the “anarchy” (Shah, 2009) of groundwater development and the depletion it has engendered must give way to management (Kemper, 2007), or in more recent parlance, to governance (Closas & Villholth, 2020; Doornbos, 2003; Faysse & Petit, 2012; Zwarteveen et al, 2017).…”

Reflecting on twenty years of international agreements concerning water governance: insights and key learning

“…In the Middle East and North Africa region, experiences have shown that seeking government efficiency or accountability has not led to addressing equity, despite it seeming like a sensible approach. It is argued that policy instruments can only succeed if power dynamics consisting of influential actors and vested interests are taken into account (Closas & Villholth, 2020 ).…”