This report grew out of a request to within the UN Administrative Coordinating Committee (ACC) Sub-Committee on Water Resources to establish a position on groundwater management within the group of UN agencies involved with groundwater development and management. It comes at a time when the use of the world's groundwater resources and related aquifer 'services' is intensifying, with little or no prospect for resolving the detrimental impacts through conventional management approaches. This raises the question as to whether such conventional water management approaches are inherently limited with respect to groundwater or whether the policy 'space' needs to be radically expanded to accommodate the drivers of demand for limited groundwater resources. The more specific question is then how the UN agencies involved with groundwater then position themselves to best effect in their respective country and regional programmes. Contributions were made from the ACC Sub-Committee members and the International Association of Hydrogeologists but a significant contribution to the report came from Marcus Moench at the Intitute for Social and Economic Transition (ISET) to whom the UN agency contributing authors are grateful. The relationship of the economic and social dynamic to the specific aquifer hydrodynamic is key. The rates of change of urbanization and agricultural intensification are now unprecedented. Complex patterns of production and consumption occur atop a set of vulnerable aquifers whose roles as physical and economic buffers are largely unrecognized. This report makes a plea for groundwater resource management to become much more realistic in what can be achieved in practice. This, it is argued, will need to be based on a much clearer appreciation of the social and economic drivers of groundwater use.
