Groundwater is invisible, but its impact is visible everywhere. Everything around us relies on groundwater, our drinking water and sanitation, our food supply and our natural environment. Yet because it is invisible, information, management and governance of groundwater is often poor and inadequate. This book contributes to UN Water Groundwater year (2022), and to the effort of “making the invisible, visible”. Through worldwide case studies ranging from the Americas (California, Brazil), to Asia (India, Iran, Lao PDR, Nepal), Africa (Malawi, Tanzania, South Africa) and the MENA region (Lebanon, Morocco, Yemen), including cases of transboundary aquifers, the chapters in this edited volume reflect important recent advances in interdisciplinary knowledge on the governance, management, practice and science-policy interfaces of groundwater.
An insightful resource for researchers and planners in the field of environmental policies, water laws, climate change and groundwater governance, this book comes with a new Introduction. The other chapters were originally published in Water International.
Introduction Part 1: Groundwater institutions 1. From an open-access to a state-controlled resource: the case of groundwater in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal 2. Pathways for effective groundwater governance in the least-developed-country context of the Lao PDR 3. Using backcasting to explore ways to improve the national water department’s contribution to good groundwater governance in South Africa 4. Groundwater governance through institutional bricolage? Participation in Morocco’s Chtouka aquifer contract Part 2: Groundwater management 5. Exploring the future impacts of urbanization and climate change on groundwater in Arusha, Tanzania 6. Impact of land use and occupation on potential groundwater recharge in a Brazilian savannah watershed 7. Problems and promise of managed recharge in karstified aquifers: the example of Lebanon 8. A multifaceted quantitative index for sustainability assessment of groundwater management: application for aquifers around Iran Part 3: Groundwater users 9. Whither collective action? Upscaling collective actions, politics and basin management in the process of ‘legitimizing’ an informal groundwater economy 10. Participatory rural appraisal to assess groundwater resources in Al-Mujaylis, Tihama Coastal Plain, Yemen 11. Federal reserved rights and California's Groundwater Management Act: resolving groundwater rights tensions in California and the western United States Part 4: Groundwater for irrigation 12. Learning from the past to build the future governance of groundwater use in agriculture 13. Drivers of groundwater utilization in water-limited rice production systems in Nepal 14. Groundwater policies and irrigation development: a study of West Bengal, India, 1980–2016 Part 5: Transboundary aquifers 15. Transboundary groundwater governance in the Guarani Aquifer System: reflections from a survey of global and regional experts 16. A methodology to identify vulnerable transboundary aquifer hotspots for multi-scale groundwater management 17. Binational reflections on pathways to groundwater security in the Mexico–United States borderlands 18. A critical review of the transboundary aquifers in South-Eastern Europe and new insights from the EU’s water framework directive implementation process
Raya Marina Stephan, IWRA fellow and former Director, is an international consultant, expert in water law. She is the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Water International. James E. Nickum, IWRA Fellow, Global Reach Awardee, and former Vice-President, is the Editor in Chief of Water International, non-resident Professorial Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and non-resident Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii. Philippus Wester, IWRA Fellow and former Director, is Regional Programme Manager, Mountain Knowledge & Action Networks at ICIMOD and a former Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Water International.
