Groundwater Governance Research Articles

Groundwater governance in South Africa: A status assessment

Groundwater governance provisions and arrangements in South Africa were studied at national level and at local level for a highly productive aquifer, the Botleng Dolomite Aquifer. Technical, legal, institutional and operational governance provisions were found to be reasonable at the national level but weak with regards to cross-sector policy coordination. At the local level, basic technical provisions such as hydrogeological maps and aquifer delineation with classified typology are in place but other governance provisions such as institutional capacity, provisions to control groundwater abstraction and pollution, cross-sector policy coordination and the implementation of a groundwater management action plan are weak or non-existent. Adaptation measures to climate change are not yet fully considered in planning. Only at the national level a groundwater strategy and artificial-recharge strategy has been developed but awaits implementation. Most critical management measures are considered, namely:• The integration of the National Groundwater Strategy (NGS) into the various water-related strategies• Strengthening of the groundwater regulatory environment• Strengthening of the institutional capacity

GOVERNANÇA DOS RISCOS E OS AQUÍFEROS TRANSFRONTEIRIÇOS

The international organizations conceive the water crises as a governance matter. Based on this premise and in the risk theory, this paper analyze the meaning of this governance, its relation to the transboundary aquifers risks and the instruments created in the international level to promote groundwater governance. Despite water governance concept has full acceptation, it is still in construction and whose potential to face water risks is ambiguous. The international instruments created to promote transboundary aquifers governance are fragile and need to be legitimated.

Local groundwater governance in Yemen: building on traditions and enabling communities to craft new rules

Local groundwater management in Yemen and the means by which stakeholders can work together to improve water governance are discussed. In the last few decades the discourse on groundwater management in Yemen has increasingly been cast in terms of crisis, triggered by rapidly declining water tables around cities and in the main agricultural areas. However, in some places in Yemen, communities have responded by implementing local rules that have reduced conflict and provided more reliable and equitable access to water. This trend towards development of local groundwater governance is described, and could make a major contribution in realizing the goals of national water-sector policies and strategies. Twenty-four cases have been identified from different parts of the country and five cases are presented in detail. The article discusses how the process of local management could be nurtured and how it could contribute to rebalancing water use in several parts of Yemen.

SUSTAINABLE GROUNDWATER USE IN AGRICULTURE

ABSTRACTWith the increasing competition for fresh water, there is a growing reliance on the abstraction of groundwater for irrigated agriculture. Groundwater irrigation demand has been growing steadily over the past decades, for many reasons including the unreliability of the traditional large canal schemes, and the increasing need of farmers to manage their own irrigation applications. In addition, unpredictability in climate has forced some farmers, particularly in semi‐arid areas, to exploit groundwater, in order to combat drought. The increasing overexploitation of important aquifers around the world, as well as groundwater contamination must be of concern to water resource planners and managers. Groundwater is a finite resource, and little is being done to accurately map, assess, monitor and regulate groundwater development for agriculture. Unconstrained and unregulated groundwater development is already impacting negatively on agricultural growth in over 111 million ha of irrigated lands, and innumerable livelihoods that rely on groundwater. Any attenuation of growth will make it more difficult to feed 9 billion people by 2050. A more proactive and integrated approach to groundwater governance, management and protection, built upon sound technical, institutional, legal, socio‐economic and environmental principles is required. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

CONVERGENT READINGS OF GROUNDWATER GOVERNANCE? ENGAGING EXCHANGES BETWEEN DIFFERENT RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES

ABSTRACTIn the last 50 years, the study of groundwater governance has given rise to rich and differentiated analytical approaches. This article proposes an exchange between the main heuristic viewpoints, results and theses of three approaches which studied groundwater governance: the study of groundwater governance as collective action initiated by Ostrom, the analysis made by Shah on informal groundwater economies and the works of Prakash, Mukherji and Birkenholtz drawing on political ecology. The aquifers on which each approach originally built its analysis played a key role in the design of analytical frameworks which, in the case of the first two approaches, were later applied to a much larger set of cases. The three approaches share many commonalities in their heuristic methods. However, they differ in the content of governance systems recommended to achieve sustainable groundwater use, and especially in the benefits of involving water users in the implementation of governance. Therefore, they also differ on what should be the focus of academic analyses. It is thus of interest to organize joint readings of cases of groundwater governance and to discuss the contents of research programmes able to provide fruitful analyses of these cases, based on local specificities. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Foreword: The role of the Botín Foundation to support the analysis of issues on water ethics

This Special Issue is the latest activity and outcome from the support and commitment by the Botin Foundation to water and ethics over the last twelve years. The Botin Foundation (BF) began its activity in the field of water resources in 1998 when it launched the Groundwater Project (Proyecto Aguas Subterraneas or PAS), one of the first interdisciplinary assessments of groundwater governance. The project under the leadership of Prof. Llamas had Spain as a showcase for many of the ethical dilemmas faced in countries across the world, like the intensive use of groundwater resources for development. This and many other questions around groundwater are inherently ethical and thus the Botin Foundation became increasingly active in the field of water ethics. In the same year of 1998, Dr Jerry Delli Priscoli and Prof. Llamas were appointed as coordinators for the UNESCO Working Group on the Ethics of Freshwater Uses. This Working Group gathered a dozen international figures with different professional backgrounds and expertise. The Botin Foundation supported this important work, first by sponsoring the final session of this working group held in Almeria (Spain) in 1999 and second through the publication of a monograph (PAS no.5) collecting the main results of this meeting and other valuable work (available at www.fundacionbotin.org/agua.htm under publications). During the Second World Water Forum held in March 2001 in The Hague, the Director of the Groundwater Project, and current Director of the Water Observatory of the Botin Foundation, Prof. Llamas chaired a session on Water Ethics. In this session one of the main conclusions still pertinent 10 years on was the need to give equal importance to the utilitarian and intangible values of water. At the next World Water Forum in 2003 in Kyoto there was a session co-chaired with Cheryl Davis of San Francisco Water Supply Co. At this Forum, UNESCO presented a series of 13 monographs – the UNESCO Water Ethics Series – that mainly included the papers prepared by the Working Group on Water and Ethics. In 2004 together with the University of Harvard, the Botin Foundation hosted its Second Botin Foundation Water Workshop (2BFWW) to stimulate debate on the so called Water crisis myth or reality?.

A Framework for the Analysis of Governance Structures Applying to Groundwater Resources and the Requirements for the Sustainable Management of Associated Ecosystem Services

The competing demands placed on groundwater for socio-economic and for ecological benefits, and the resultant tradeoffs, represent a major challenge for the management arena. The governance of groundwater resources and the sustainable management of associated ecosystem services must take into consideration human and biophysical characteristics as intertwined systems. Frameworks and analytical tools are required to help understand complex governance regimes, and the linkages between management and the corresponding effects on ecosystem services. Presented in this paper is a framework for the analysis of groundwater governance based on the adaptive management approach and the ecosystem services concept. Governance can be analyzed on the basis of certain characteristics. One characteristic of a governance regime assumed to be crucial for adaptive and sustainable management is vertical integration, which refers to the connectedness of different administrative levels, including the involvement of non-governmental stakeholders in decision-making and planning processes. The framework was applied in the Upper Guadiana Basin in Spain, where the intensive use of groundwater has led to significant conflicts between farmers, authorities and environmental conservation groups. The analysis showed that conflicts arose from a lack of vertical integration; e.g., one-way communication between official authorities and the exclusion of local stakeholders during planning processes. The framework is deemed to be a strong analytical tool as it provides a basis for organized and context-specific case study assessment and renders complex groundwater management more transparent and comprehensible. The framework will be further applied and enhanced for application in international case studies.

The challenges facing sustainable and adaptive groundwater management in South Africa

Long-term population growth and economic development are placing ever-increasing pressure on South Africa’s freshwater supply. On the basis of the current climate change predictions, which often entail uncertain consequences for aquifer systems and the associated groundwater goods and services, it is expected that the stress on water will increase even further. Currently, South Africa’s groundwater governance regime does not provide the capacity to assure effective and sustainable resource regulation and allocation. To date, the management of groundwater is hampered by a variety of uncertainties, such as global climate change and socio-economic growth, as well as ineffective governance structures affecting resource use, regulation, protection and the implementation of alternative strategies needed to achieve sustainable management. This paper presents the results of a qualitative assessment of interviews conducted with experts in South Africa. Four key challenges are identified to the development of adaptive and sustainable groundwater management and the successful implementation of current water legislation in South Africa. These are: the undervaluation of groundwater importance and significance; the need for expertise and information at all scales; the centralisation of power; and the disregard of ecosystems and the associated goods and services. As a means to tackle these challenges, it has been assumed that the concept of adaptive water management represents a suitable approach to governing groundwater resources, by taking into account complex system linkages between hydrogeological, political, socio-economic and environmental domains. Supporting principles, such as tools for cooperation, participation and information networks, have been developed to facilitate the implementation of adaptive water management approaches and hence to achieve institutional change in the political arena of groundwater management.Keywords: groundwater, South Africa, ecosystem services, adaptive water management, qualitative assessment

Book review: Taming the Anarchy: Groundwater Governance in South Asia, by Tushaar Shah (RFF Press, 2008)

Tushaar Shah—a development economist and senior fellow at the International Water Management Institute, IWMI—has written an excellent and timely book (Shah 2008). In stylish and well-argued prose, he deconstructs the dominant view of irrigation and groundwater management through a close examination of their status and recent history in South Asia, and in particular in his native India. (IWMI staff continue to develop the line of research: e.g. Mukherji et al. (2009) appear to have taken some of these ideas forward for the Indo-Gangetic and the Yellow River basins.) From the hydrogeologist’s viewpoint “Taming the Anarchy” is interesting especially because Shah draws on and integrates ideas from different disciplines, but particularly the socio-economic sphere, to enlighten the debate. He proposes that the orthodox technocratic view must be leavened with an understanding of the welfare outcomes produced by groundwater irrigation and the threats to those outcomes that would be produced if the resource were to fail. He further postulates that water-sector professionals and political leaders must re-cast their view of what is feasible in managing that resource, by taking a wider view of the socio-economic factors that currently stymie most efforts to improve it. A telling example that he provides is the cooption of political leaders in hard-rock areas of India by the strong “vote bank” of the smallholder farming community, so that even where cheap electricity for pumping is fuelling the race to the bottom of these lowyielding aquifers (a race that is everywhere recognised as unsustainable), elected leaders continue to provide and to promise subsidised electricity rates for irrigation. In Shah’s view, South Asian irrigation is peculiar in that the groundwater pumping boom is driven not so much by lack of water as by lack of farmland. The increasing rural population densities push farmers to intensify production and produce high value crops, and this requires water. The advent of modern pumps and the consequent explosion in the number of small groundwater abstractions are direct results. Shah characterises the informal and uncontrolled nature of the modern irrigation economies of South Asia by the phrase “atomistic individualism”. This is contrasted with the orthodox view of national and international agencies, which assume that groundwater abstractions can be controlled by a centralised authority that formally manages water distribution rather in the way that the large-scale surface-irrigation projects of the colonial era were conceived. For Shah, “taming the anarchy” in the manner that might be envisaged by a hydrogeologist will only be possible over several decades. In the interim, he proposes that South Asia must chart an innovative course that recognises the variability in the irrigation economies that have developed in response to different hydrological settings. This is the only way to provide a framework for the exploitation of the region’s aquifers that will at least avoid the worst environmental excesses and at the same time prevent a collapse of the hundreds of millions of dependent farming livelihoods. Shah notes that “Governing an informal economy is a contradiction in terms” (p. 203), and that there is no possibility that the “atomistic” nature of South Asian irrigation will be formalised soon. He contends correctly that there is little connection between the reality of local water economies and reforms to policy and regulation borne out of the international discourse on integrated water-resources management (see, for example, the Global Water Partnership website – GWP 2008). Given the huge numbers of abstractors involved, there is no realistic way for centralised controls to be implemented and policed. Indirect management strategies must therefore be used, which impact the “environment of conduct” (e.g. electricity prices) rather than the conduct itself (water pumping). (In a recent paper on effective and accountable public authority in poor countries, the Institute of Development Studies (IDS 2010) similarly concludes that “instead of viewing informal arrangements as a major part of the governance problem, they could also be part of the solution”.) Received: 20 September 2010 /Accepted: 16 November 2010 Published online: 4 January 2011

Taming the Anarchy: Groundwater Governance in South Asia

Taming the Anarchy: Groundwater Governance in South Asia

Tushaar Shah: Taming the Anarchy: Groundwater Governance in South Asia

South Asian groundwater seems a narrow subject ill suited to an exploration of the socio-ecology of natural resource development and exploitation. Yet Tushaar Shah’s new book Taming the Anarchy takes a historical perspective on water resources and agrarian production in an intriguing treatment of irrigation governance that has implications beyond South Asia or just groundwater. Shah’s synthesis of irrigation technology as the means of agrarian livelihood, with social and political organization framing the evolving modes of production, offers new insights of interest to a broad Human Ecology readership. Mounting pressure on resources, collusion among farmers and officials, agencies working at cross-purposes: allout battle characterizes groundwater “anarchy” in South Asia. The contemporary era—from roughly the 1960s—is the latest phase in the long history of South Asian irrigation. This latest era is marked by an explosion in number, geographical extent, and importance to overall irrigation of private groundwater wells. Shah’s extensive review of studies and statistics from India and Pakistan, and to a lesser degree from Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, constitute the supporting empirics. The state—ever a step behind the unfolding reality on the ground—ineffectively manages or even fully comprehends the groundwater revolution in South Asia. The implications Taming the Anarchy has for future decision-making center on the elusive dynamic between policy and anarchy. Yet Shah only partially resolves this tension, leaving important questions open for further enquiry. The typology of groundwater institutions (pp. 155ff) is normative but not ultimately reductionist to the South Asian context. Specific insights are drawn from broader international experience, including China, the United States, Mexico, Australia, Spain, the Middle East, and SubSaharan Africa. Missing entirely is a review of Soviet-era irrigation that informed the command-and-control model of public administration in India during the Green Revolution’s privately financed groundwater explosion. Shah posits that the forms groundwater governance takes are produced by the interaction of users at multiple institutional scales with the physical resources they use or vie for. This analytical approach holds broad descriptive value but ineffectively accounts for the transformation among institutional forms. Innovation and evolution—what the final chapter’s “thriving in anarchy” are all about—remain inadequately explained, partly by Shah’s own admission. The first of eight chapters, “The Hydraulic Past: Irrigation and State Formation” historically contextualizes the “era of atomistic irrigation” (p. 29), specifically in the Mughal and British colonial periods. A particularly helpful section relates the modern irrigation experience in South Asia to colonial and postcolonial experiments in irrigation from other regions: West Asia and North Africa, humid East and Southeast Asia, and Africa. Shah engages theoretically with Foucault and Wittfogel, among others, to understand the differential efficacy of “constructive imperialism” across time and space, as well as to broach the relation of hydraulic interventions to state formation. Data on irrigation types, area, and users reveal the increasingly important role of groundwater relative to surface water in the irrigation economies of South Asia. C. Scott (*) Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and School of Geography & Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA e-mail: cascott@email.arizona.edu

Natural Resources and Economic Development, At Loggerheads? Agricultural Expansion, Poverty Reduction, and Environment in the Tropical Forests, Biocultural Diversity and Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Human Ecology in the Arctic, Biocultural Diversity and Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Human Ecology in the Arctic and Taming the Anarchy: Groundwater Governance in South Asia

Natural Resources and Economic Development, At Loggerheads? Agricultural Expansion, Poverty Reduction, and Environment in the Tropical Forests, Biocultural Diversity and Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Human Ecology in the Arctic, Biocultural Diversity and Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Human Ecology in the Arctic and Taming the Anarchy: Groundwater Governance in South Asia

Groundwater governance: explaining regulatory non-compliance

This paper explores the non-compliance of water users through a case study of groundwater resources in the Gulf Islands (British Columbia (BC)) and the San Juan Islands (Washington). The research challenges two assumptions: that local regulations can easily incorporate scientific research, which in turn leads to sound on-the-ground management; that sound on-the-ground management translates into effective enforcement at the local level. The authors suggest that non-compliance is a function of several intervening factors previously identified in the literature – regulatory awareness, expense, normative values, enforcement style – as well as one which has not yet been explored: biophysical fit.

Institutional Challenges for National Groundwater Governance: Policies and Issues

Understanding the issues surrounding groundwater governance is a precondition for developing policy recommendations for both national and transboundary groundwater governance. This review discusses groundwater attributes relevant to the design of governance systems and provides a systematic review of current national groundwater governance differentiated by various policy instruments. The synthesis of both resource system characteristics and experience with policy instruments allows us to conceptualize institutional aspects of groundwater governance. This leads to six institutional aspects: (1) voluntary compliance; (2) tradition and mental models; (3) administrative responsibility and bureaucratic inertia; (4) conflict resolution mechanisms; (5) political economy; and (6) information deficits. Each of these issues embodies institutional challenges for national and international policy implementation.

Groundwater governance and the Law of the Hidden Sea

The paper offers an alternative interdisciplinary approach to dealing with the complexity associated with groundwater resources, providing a new angle that integrates deep groundwater systems as defined by hydro-geologists with a paradigm shift in natural resource governance, developed by political scientists. It questions the piecemeal approach to governance of groundwater resources, coupled with the lack of acknowledgment regarding the hydraulic connection of vast deep aquifers—or a hidden sea of groundwater. Rather than relying on traditional approaches to groundwater governance, which treat the resource like a mineral resource underlying the boundaries of a sovereign nation, the “post-sovereignty” and “multi-level” governance model proposed here for groundwater resources acknowledges that groundwater is hydraulically connected to the ocean and is equally complex with respect to predictive modeling. Existing legal instruments associated with the ocean that fall under the global “contract” of the UNCLOS, together with ongoing efforts to develop a legal instrument for transboundary aquifers, offer useful lessons. The paper concludes that a “world water contract” or Law of the Hidden Sea could be adapted to incorporate groundwater as a global common, deep aquifers that are not in direct hydraulic connection with surface water resources and that are part of the developing common heritage of mankind.

Tushaar Shah: Taming the anarchy: groundwater governance in South Asia

‘Taming the Anarchy’ is an important and—as Tushaar Shah says in its preface—a provocative book. Readers, he expects, will question some of his powerful ideas and arguments. Shah, Senior Advisor to the Director General at the International Water Management Institute in Colombo and Senior Advisor to the Government of India, exhibits in this book the rare skill of being able to write for both politicians and practitioners while maintaining the scientiWc rigor of the groundwater scientist he is. Shah eloquently explains why after independence the relation between South Asian states and their farming communities began to change as supply-based water delivery became unsatisfactory. In a relatively short period of time, this gave rise to an era of atomistic pump irrigation. The author provides interesting details in describing the extent of the tube well irrigation revolution in South Asia and the likely consequences for the future of canal irrigation. He also explores the spatial variability of groundwater potential in the region, refuting the simplistic claim of general overexploitation of the resource. Shah makes it clear that pump irrigation has not solved all the problems of irrigated agriculture in South Asia. To the contrary, sustaining irrigated agriculture in South Asia is a huge challenge, requiring actions by the farmers and initiatives from society itself. Irrigated agriculture and food production in South Asia, a region with about 1.5 billion people, deserve our interested attention because of its potential impact on all our lives. Causes of the pump irrigation revolution

Groundwater governmentality: hegemony and technologies of resistance in Rajasthan's (India) groundwater governance

Globally, decentralisation has become the dominant paradigm for environmental governance. This paper explores the linkages between green governmentality approaches to subjectivity and Gramscian notions of hegemony to examine recent efforts in Rajasthan, India to decentralise groundwater governance through targeted formal regulations and outreach activities, such as water awareness campaigns (Jal Abhiyaan). The latter seeks to alter the beliefs and practices of farmers by institutionalising their support for state groundwater conservation efforts, including privatisation. The paper draws on household surveys and interviews with farmers and government agents to examine the relationship between the political economic motivations for and practices of state subject‐making and differential resistance to these efforts based on farmers’ multiple subject positions. Findings suggest, first, that the state is motivated through its monetary and advisory relationship with donor agencies, such as the World Bank. Through both outreach activities and coercion, it attempts to gain ‘consent’ for its proposals, which devolve state control rather than truly decentralising decision‐making, to make self‐conducting and willing subjects of specifically neoliberal groundwater conservation. But, second, these attempts are being resisted by some farmers through protests, informal discussions, non‐participation, and the collectivisation of access to groundwater and irrigation through irrigation partnerships. Third, resistance to these efforts, or support for them, is different between farmers based on their multiple subjectivities (caste, class and ecological conditions). The paper advances both our understanding of the processes of environmental subject‐making and of the devolution of environmental governance, by integrating the lessons from governmentality and Gramscian approaches to social power and subjectivity.

The evolution of groundwater governance: productivity, equity and changes in the level of China's aquifers

Abstract The overall goal of our paper is to examine how the evolution of groundwater governance in North China has affected the rural economy. Based on a random sample of 48 villages in nine counties in North China, our results show that over the last 15–20 years collectively owned tubewells have been gradually privatized. Our analyses demonstrate that increasing groundwater scarcity and policy intervention (mainly fiscal and financial subsidies for tubewell investment) have led to the observed shifts in tubewell ownership patterns. Our results also show that the privatization of tubewells has affected cropping patterns in North China. When villages shift towards private tubewells, farmers move into more water-sensitive and high-valued crops. Privatization, although having no effect on crop productivity in our sample, has a positive effect on income. Increased groundwater use is also shown to improve income distribution. However, the evolution of tubewell ownership in our study villages comes at a cost: increasing privatization is associated with falling water tables.

The challenge of groundwater governance: case studies from Spain and Australia

This paper examines the relevance to groundwater management of Ostrom’s design principles for managing common property resources. Experience in four case studies of groundwater management in the Murray Darling Basin in Australia and the Upper Guadiana Basin in Spain suggests that while Ostrom’s design principles are relevant, sustainable groundwater management depends on the effective collaboration between government authorities and water users. A flexible and adaptive management approach is required, with collaboration between scientists, policy makers, water suppliers, and water users. Key management challenges include agreeing on a sustainable level of extraction, and establishing effective coordination and collaboration, and monitoring and control systems. Further case studies of groundwater management and their synthesis could make a useful contribution to the transition towards sustainable groundwater management regimes.

Groundwater governance through electricity supply management: Assessing an innovative intervention in Gujarat, western India

Gujarat, a rapidly industrializing state in western India, is notorious for groundwater over-exploitation. A perverse link between energy subsidies and groundwater overdraft has left the state with a bankrupt electricity utility and depleted aquifers, especially since the late 1980s. Moreover, this perverse relationship has meant that groundwater irrigators have essentially held Gujarat's non-farm rural economy to ransom. Efforts to regulate groundwater overdraft since the early 1970s have been unsuccessful, as have attempts to charge a rational electricity tariff to groundwater irrigators. During 2003–2006, drawing upon a proposal outlined by researchers, the government launched the Jyotigram (lighted village) scheme , which invested US$ 290 million to separate agricultural electricity feeders from non-agricultural ones, and established a tight regimen for farm power rationing in the countryside. By 2006, Gujarat covered almost all of its 18,000 villages under the Jyotigram scheme of rationalized power supply. With this, two major changes have occurred: (a) villages receive 24 h three-phase power supply for domestic uses, in schools, hospitals, village industries, all subject to metered tariff; (b) tubewell owners receive 8 h/day of power of full voltage and on a pre-announced schedule. The Jyotigram scheme has radically improved the quality of village life, spurred non-farm economic enterprises, halved the power subsidy to agriculture, and reduced groundwater overdraft. It has also produced positive and negative impacts on medium and large farmers, while notably harming marginal farmers and the landless, who depend for their access to irrigation on water markets which have become much smaller, post- Jyotigram. In addition, the water prices charged by tubewell owners have increased by 30–50%. We propose that the Jyotigram scheme, with some refinements, can be implemented successfully in other regions of South Asia facing similar challenges of groundwater governance.