The Challenge of Making Groundwater Visible: A Review of Communication Approaches and Tools in France

Abstract

Groundwater specialists strive to make groundwater issues visible. They face a dual challenge: first to develop knowledge on groundwater and secondly to share this knowledge with other stakeholders who should be included in knowledge development, groundwater management and protection policy. Questioning communication is all the more interesting as groundwater is a quasi-invisible resource. How groundwater and issues can be made more visible? In the field of sociology, with a pragmatist stance, our chapter questions how instruments frame interactions and represent groundwater. Indeed, the groundwater is made visible by tables, indicators, maps, photographs, videos, games, stories in newspaper and spokespersons such as hydrogeologists. Within a project funded by AFB (The French Agency for Biodiversity), we reported on a number of communication approaches and activities implemented in 11 case studies in France. The inventory is based on web mining, grey literature review and interviews. The chapter develops a transversal analysis of the use of the instruments, and identifies assets and limits across the cases according to the following categories: public targeted; content, issues brought to the fore and normative stance adopted; type/format. Finally, concrete recommendations are made.

Payment for environmental services related to aquifers: a review of specific issues and existing programmes

“…The implementation of communication campaigns to raise EcSA awareness thus is a key step for ensuring support for PEvSA and other public policies related to aquifer protection. This should go beyond the use of scientific representations, and make more use of mass-media techniques, such as artistic representations, to reach a broader audience by showing the social and political dimensions of groundwater (Richard-Ferroudji & Lassaube, 2020). The use of labelling that certifies EvSA production by farmers may further promote public support for PEvSA, as was done in the managed aquifer recharge of Kumamoto, Japan (see 3.6).…”

Commons as Demanding Social Constructions: The Case of Aquifers in Rural Karnataka

“…It can be seen in broad daylight only when it gushes out from a borewell or when it lies at the bottom of an open well. Making groundwater visible is a challenge (Richard-Ferroudji and Lassaube 2020). Another reason why the criteria is not valid is that, since power relationships are very hierarchical in most Indian villages, dominated people may fear, rightly or wrongly, that they shall lose more than the dominant groups in case of change.…”

“…As already mentioned, you can barely see an aquifer. An aquifer should be made ‘visible’ through better communication (Richard-Ferroudji and Lassaube 2020) before a committee can sit around it. Spokespersons for the aquifers must be recognised and promoted: scientists, among others can ‘voice groundwater’ and make aquifer issues visible at the local level.…”