Advances in Groundwater Governance

Karen G. Villholth has more than 25 years of experience in groundwater resources assessment and management. She deals with research, policy advice, and capacity development related to groundwater irrigation for smallholders, transboundary aquifers, groundwater resources assessment and modelling, climate change and groundwater, adaptation through underground solutions, role of depleting aquifers in global food production, groundwater and eco-system services, and groundwater management and governance for institutions at various levels, from local to global. She engages with multidisciplinary teams and stakeholders in co-developing tools, approaches, and policies to a more sustainable use of groundwater for livelihoods, food security, and environmental integrity. Karen is a Principal Researcher and a Research Group Leader at IWMI, International Water Management Institute at the Southern Africa regional office. She is leading the global IWMI-led partnership initiative on Groundwater Solutions for Policy and Practice (GRIPP). Karen holds a PhD in Groundwater Assessment and a MSc in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark and a MSc in Civil Engineering from the University of Washington. She previously worked for DHI-Water and Environment and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. She is co-author of three books related to groundwater and more than 50 peer-reviewed journal papers. Elena López Gunn is the Founder and Director of ICATALIST and a Cheney Fellow at University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. Elena finished her PhD at King's College, London. She also holds a Masters from the University of Cambridge. She was an Associate Professor at IE Business school and a Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics as Alcoa Research Fellow. Professionally, Elena has collaborated with a number of organizations including UNESCO, FAO, UNDP, EU DG Research and Innovation, universities (Spanish and Dutch) and river basin agencies, the England and Wales Environment Agency, as well as the private sector like Repsol, and NGOs like Transparency International-Spanish Chapter. She has published on a range of topics mainly related to water security, social innovation, collaborative decision making, water governance, evaluation of public policy, knowledge management and transfer. Her current main focus is climate change adaptation, DRR and socio-ecological systems. She has recently worked as Technical Expert for the International Atomic Agency on projects related to groundwater governance and capacity building. Elena lives in Madrid with her husband, Dave, and her three fabulous children. Jac van der Gun is a Dutch groundwater hydrologist and water resources specialist (MSc, Wageningen University). He has been employed successively by a Dutch water supply company (WMG, Velp), UN-OTC (New York) and the R&D organisation TNO (Delft/Utrecht). His professional career spans almost half a century and has focused on (1) water resources exploration and assessment (including significant fieldwork); (2) hydrogeological mapping; (3) water resources planning and manage¬ment; and (4) training, capacity building and institutional development. He has been involved actively in the Groundwater Reconnaissance of The Netherlands (entrusted with the overall responsibility for this programme). His long-term assignments abroad include positions as a resident hydrologist in Bolivia and as a resident water resources assessment project manager in Yemen and Paraguay. In addition, he carried out numerous short missions in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Europe for various international and national organisations, providing scientific-technical input, supervising projects, and formulating or evaluating projects and programmes. He has also lectured at UNESCO-IHE on groundwater for more than thirty years. In 2003 he became the founding director of the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC) and since then he is mainly active in groundwater-related projects of international organisations (e.g. the Groundwater Governance Project). Kirstin I. Conti has 10 years experience in the environmental and water policy sectors. As a child, Kirstin’s favorite gardening project was creating a compost bin – placing worms in a compost box and feeding them produce scraps. Years later her love for nature led her to her major in Earth Systems at Stanford University, which is an interdisciplinary program focused on environmental problem solving. At that time, her experiences in the classroom and conducting field research in in the Southern Africa region sparked her passionate for a career in water management. Her professional experiences revealed the complexity of managing shared water resources. As an environmental consultant in San Francisco, she witnessed stakeholder conflicts prevent the effective management of California’s water. She completed a Masters of Laws at University of Dundee and her doctoral research at the University of Amsterdam and the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC). Her focus is improving groundwater governance and conflict prevention mechanisms for the purpose of ensuring that our most abundant fresh water resource, groundwater, is managed sustainably, equitably, and cooperatively. Alberto Garrido is Spanish Professor of Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics and Vice-Rector of Quality and Efficiency at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). Has a Bachelor Degree and MSc in Agricultural Engineering; a Masters in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis (1992) and a Doctoral Degree in Agricultural Economics from the UPM (1995). Has supervised 17 Doctoral Dissertations, published 195 references, of which 70 are academic articles and 15 books. Has 25 years of experience in leading research projects and grants. His research focuses on agricultural risks and insurance, natural resource economics and policy and water policy. Has consulted for the main international organisations (FAO, BID, The World Bank, IFAD), several national governments of Europe, Asia and America, and numerous private companies and foundations. He has coordinated 55 research projects, 8 of which with international consortia. Since 1996, he is a member of the Advisory Board of the Rosenberg Forum of International Policy.

Part 1: Setting the scene

1 Groundwater governance: rationale, definition, current state and heuristic framework
Karen G. Villholth & Kirstin I. Conti

2 Emergence and evolution of groundwater management and governance
Marco García, Ebel Smidt & Jacobus J. de Vries

3 Understanding groundwater governance through a social ecological system framework – relevance and limits
Marta Rica, Olivier Petit & Elena López-Gunn

4 Groundwater management: policy principles & planning practices
Stephen Foster & John Chilton

Part 2: Key elements of groundwater governance

5 Leadership and political will for groundwater governance: indispensable for meeting the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Alfred M. Duda

6 Legal principles and legal frameworks related to groundwater
Stefano Burchi

7 Participation of stakeholders and citizens in groundwater management: the role of collective action
Zachary Sugg & Edella Schlager

8 Economic instruments, behaviour and incentives in groundwater management
Phoebe Koundouri, Ebun Akinsete, Nikolaos Englezos, Xanti I. Kartala, Ioannis Souliotis & Josef Adler

9 Cooperation and conflict resolution in groundwater and aquifer management
W. Todd Jarvis

10 Data, information, knowledge and diagnostics on groundwater
Jac van der Gun

11 Education and capacity development for groundwater resources management
Viviana Re & Bruce Misstear

12 Groundwater governance – impact of awareness-raising and citizen pressure on groundwater management authority in the United States
Andrew Stone

13 Assessing and monitoring groundwater governance
Aziza Akhmouch & Delphine Clavreul

Part 3: Integration and policy linkages beyond the local groundwater system

14 Groundwater governance for poverty eradication, social equity and health
Sean G. Furey

15 Managing energy-irrigation nexus: insights from Karnataka and Punjab states in India
Aditi Mukherji

16 Steps towards groundwater-sensitive land use governance and management practices
Daniel A. Wiegant & Frank van Steenbergen

17 Linking groundwater and surface water: conjunctive water management
Richard S. Evans & Peter Dillon

18 Global food and trade dimensions of groundwater governance
Arjen Y. Hoekstra

19 Governance and management of transboundary aquifers
Shaminder Puri & Karen G. Villholth

20 Governing extractable subsurface resources and subsurface space
Jac van der Gun & Emilio Custodio

Part 4: Cases

21 Groundwater governance in the Great Artesian Basin, Australia
Rien A. Habermehl

22 Institutions and policies governing groundwater development, use and management in the Indo-Gangetic Plains of India
M. Dinesh Kumar

23 Groundwater governance in the European Union, its history and its legislation: an enlightening example of groundwater governance
Jean Fried, Philippe Quevauviller & Elisa Vargas Amelin

24 Groundwater governance in the United States: a mosaic of approaches
Sharon B. Megdal, Adriana Zuniga Teran, Robert G. Varady, Nathaniel Delano, Andrea K. Gerlak & Ethan T. Vimont

25 Turning the tide – curbing groundwater over-abstraction in the Tosca-Molopo area, South Africa
Paul Seward & Gabriel Stephanus du Toit van Dyk

26 Governing groundwater in the Middle East and North Africa Region
François Molle, Alvar Closas & Waleed Al-Zubari

27 Perspectives on Guarani Aquifer Governance
Luiz Amore

28 Groundwater governance in São Paulo and Mexico metropolitan areas: some comparative lessons learnt
Ricardo Hirata & Oscar Escolero