Governing groundwater with knowledge, motivation, and agency

Groundwater is an increasingly vital common pool resource shared by water supply, irrigation, and ecosystems, but it is difficult to govern. "Effective groundwater governance requires that key stakeholders have combinations of knowledge, motivation, and agency to act together effectively," said Ruth Meinzen-Dick, a researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), at a CGIAR Initiative on NEXUS Gains webinar. The session 'Crafting combinations to govern groundwater: Knowledge, motivation, and agency' was held on 20 November 2024. It shared results from NEXUS Gains research on groundwater governance including a recent special issue of the International Journal of the Commons.

The knowledge, motivation, and agency framework for groundwater governance (Meinzen-Dick and Bruns 2024).

Meinzen-Dick explained that groundwater problems are often called "wicked problems" because "they're really complex, contradictory, and resistant to resolution" and it can be hard to even get agreement on what the problem is or what would be a good solution. While there are many institutional tools for governing groundwater, there are no universal solutions, and successes are rare. "Because of these challenges, we need governance institutions that will coordinate across actors," Meinzen-Dick continued. "Instead of starting with tools, start with identifying who are the key actors. Then consider what they need in terms of knowledge, motivation, and agency."

Groundwater games for systemic change

The second presentation was from Richu Sanil at the Foundation for Ecological Security. He shared his organization's experiences combining approaches for water governance, especially focusing on groundwater games to create systemic change. Sanil explained that "India is one of the largest groundwater users in the world and 80 percent of India's irrigation is dependent on groundwater."

"The games are like structured spaces, where the communities can learn, reflect, discuss, and experiment," he said. People who participate in the games can visualize the impact they have on water resources in the long term. Community discussions follow, where the goal is not for outsiders to prescribe solutions for water governance, but to empower communities to create solutions themselves. Sanil highlighted that systems thinking is crucial to water governance at the community level. He also stressed that individual tools don't work on their own: it is the combination of games and discussion, followed by crop water budgeting and capacity building, that together increase knowledge, motivation, and agency.

Caring matters in groundwater governance

Margreet Zwarteveen at the IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education began her presentation by sharing that many of the tools and mechanisms used so far to regulate and govern groundwater "have been focusing on the individual behavior of farmers, saying that as individuals they pump too much". Which is, as she put it, "a tragedy-of-the-commons reasoning".

Zwarteveen discussed the potential of the conceptual vocabulary of care to complement, refresh, and expand ways of talking about and doing groundwater governance. Her team's research shows that "many irrigators actually are concerned about the depletion of the aquifer on which they depend, even when their own pumping behaviors are partly to blame". Many irrigators over-extract not because of ignorance or greed, but because the political-economic environment pushes them to do so. Despite such pressures, farmers do sometimes engage in conscious efforts to protect or recharge groundwater, use it cautiously, and share it fairly. Acknowledging people's existing practices of caring for groundwater can provide a fruitful starting point for engaging in processes of joint learning in support of strategies for wisely governing it.

Foregrounding care for groundwater is a challenge to the current emphasis on control over groundwater. More than a new theory, Zwarteveen proposed embracing care as an analytical sensibility, with the study of practices of care serving as one promising way to widen the conceptual and political space of possibilities for human-groundwater relations.

Governing aquifer storage for nexus gains

The final presentation came from Bryan Bruns, independent researcher and consultant, who provided a broader view of governing groundwater for gains in the food−water−energy−ecosystems nexus. Based on research under the Nexus Gains Initiative, he identified three key areas where governance could make a big difference.

The first key area, Bruns explained, is solar energy: "There's a whole lot of potential and promise for what solar energy could do, in terms of making power for pumping more accessible, available, as well as climate benefits." However, the challenge is to do that in a way that sustainably provides net benefits and considers the whole nexus. "Pumping more water inherently takes water away from someplace else … which could offset or in some cases be even worse than the initial benefits," unless support for solar pumps is packaged with support for local knowledge and governance capacity. The second area is negotiating aquifer recharge, and inclusive planning to make sure those benefits will be available and widely shared. The third area is including ecosystems and considering how to protect groundwater-dependent ecosystems and their benefits, including springs, wetlands, lakes, and rivers.

Embedding research into practice

In the panel discussion, IFPRI's Hagar ElDidi first reflected on how the idea of care resonates in her work, where she sees that "communities or 'the depleters' do care", and urged that "we take that assumption with whatever work we do going forward". ElDidi also shared some personal case studies relating to research on groundwater games from Ethiopia, Ghana, Egypt, and India.

The other panelist, consultant Alvar Closas, proposed that it is time to "move beyond this first generation of groundwater governance, toward a second stage where we think about how to apply the knowledge we generate, how to act upon it, how to implement it, and also how to make it relevant for decision makers".

Answering participant questions, Zwarteveen expressed discomfort with talking about 'what we can do': international water experts should reframe thinking about how 'we' can help, she said, with more emphasis on community empowerment. Sanil shared an example of how the Foundation for Ecological Security mobilized community members to measure groundwater. Meinzen-Dick added that by taking a citizen science approach, communities have "trust in that data … because they were part of the process of collecting it".

Meinzen-Dick closed the webinar by sharing one of the key lessons from research on groundwater governance: the importance of long-term partnerships in a field where results "don't happen overnight". She continued, "the NEXUS Gains Initiative ends at the end of this year. But the new phase of this work will take up the issue of water governance more broadly, not just groundwater". She then called out to the participants of the webinar "to continue to take forward many of these ideas, recognizing that … there is not a simple solution or one size fits all."

Didn't catch the webinar? You can also listen to the podcast:

View the presentation slides by Ruth Meinzen-Dick View the presentation slides by Richu Sanil View the presentation slides by Margreet Zwarteveen View the presentation slides by Bryan Bruns

Learn more about all the webinars in the series on the NEXUS Gains Talks landing page and subscribe to the NEXUS Gains newsletter to be the first to hear about upcoming webinars.

This work was carried out under the CGIAR Initiative on NEXUS Gains, which is grateful for the support of CGIAR Trust Fund contributors: www.cgiar.org/funders

Header image: Indian village discussion of groundwater governance. Photo by Foundation for Ecological Security staff.

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