Groundwater licensing and its challenges

Abstract

The registering and/or licensing of groundwater abstraction is held as a "best practice" in the control of groundwater use and a necessary step toward volumetric management of resources. Yet, groundwater licensing and legalization processes in areas with many scattered (often agricultural) users tend to face severe difficulties and are rarely successful. Based on a global survey on groundwater governance, this article revisits the reasons for the users' lack of interest, the failure of most legalization/licensing processes, and the frequent lack of both capacity and the political will of government agencies in conducting such processes. It identifies a groundwater licensing dilemma that explains why governments deploy too little effort too late, and finally proposes a few steps and principles to be considered when deciding whether licensing is achievable and how to increase the likelihood of success.

Optimising the water we eat—rethinking policy to enhance productive and sustainable use of water in agri-food systems across scales

“…26,35 Unfortunately, in practice, regulatory frameworks such as permits for water abstractions have had only limited success in many areas, particularly in lower income countries. [36][37][38][39][40] The reasons for this situation are manifold. Given the substantial investments by governments, donors, and multilateral development banks to improve water use in agriculture (through agronomic practices, establishment and modernisation of irrigation systems, and etc), it is paramount to understand the reasons behind these observations and learn from experiences to guide policy making and future investments.…”

“…Nevertheless, if a shift to more efficient irrigation technology is accompanied by strict limits and control of pumping for irrigation, it can help to arrest further increase in water consumptionseen for instance, in Nebraska, USA, 32,33 and the Guadalquivir basins in Spain. 34 Single approaches that focus on registering and licensing of water abstractions have rarely been successful in areas with many (mainly agricultural) users of different sizes 38 Personal View and enforcement of regulations is limited. Issues that can jeopardise licensing systems include not knowing the sustainable abstraction rates due to hydrological complexity and scarcity of data, the high administrative burden (particularly with many small users), and ineffective sanctions.…”

“…The success of command and control systems with imposed fees, restrictions, and sanctions (disincentives) is limited, changing water use behaviour through different benefit sharing and incentives is often more promising. 38,45 Understanding actors, their objectives, motives, and drivers for change (table 2) and the enabling environment allows policy makers to design the right incentives to support sustainable water use. This approach goes well beyond the conventional remedy to simply increase irrigation service fees.…”

Satellite‐Based Monitoring of Irrigation Water Use: Assessing Measurement Errors and Their Implications for Agricultural Water Management Policy

“…Irrigation abstraction rights, where defined, typically are specified and enforced in terms of a quantity of abstracted or applied water use (Molle & Closas, 2020a). To support monitoring and management, it is critical that remote sensing models are able to estimate accurately the total amount of water abstracted by a farmer as opposed to only the consumptive rate of irrigation water use that does not consider inefficiencies associated with irrigation application or conveyance.…”

“…One alternative to address this issue would be to instead use satellite data as a tool to enforce restrictions or regulations pertaining to consumptive as opposed to applied water use. Consumptive use management has been proposed, in particular, to support management of long‐term aquifer depletion in regions with intensive groundwater irrigation (Molle & Closas, 2020a), due to the fact that consumptive water use is equivalent to net extraction of water from an aquifer—that is, the amount of water removed from aquifer storage after accounting for return flows caused by inefficiencies in the application and conveyance of abstracted water to fields. As such, monitoring of consumptive use of groundwater could provide a potentially effective tool to sustainably balance agricultural water use with recharge rates and limit long‐term storage depletion.…”