The promotion or permission of groundwater development (by design or default) has been successful. The uptake of groundwater use in preference to surface water supplies of raw water is apparent in irrigated agriculture (where the reliability and flexibility confer enormous advantage) and also in municipal supplies where quality is more consistent. However, the aggregate impact of millions of individual pumping decisions, while highly conditioned by the hydrogeological status of the pumped aquifers, is evident in falling groundwater tables and declining water quality. Traditional water management approaches may not have been able to 'socialize' the responses required in order to reduce drawdown and pollution externalities across communities of groundwater users.
The impact of emerging groundwater problems can be intensely local or regional in effect. However, the types of management responses to address the particular circumstances may not have been adjusted to these patterns of use and impact. In particular:
Large-scale, publicly funded tubewell development has tended to be supply driven.
Legal and regulatory provisions at national level cannot be policed adequately.
Forcing the relaxation of overexploited systems may be impossible even where the economic rationale is compelling.
Regulation of the drilling industry may provide information but may also inhibit development in some circumstances.
The enhancement of indirect recharge may work for shallow groundwater circulation, but recovery of deeper systems requires sophisticated injection and alternative sources of high-quality water.
Progressive attempts to encourage the formation of groundwater user associations are in their infancy in developing countries. The results of irrigation management transfer and water user associations are now being documented, but specific groundwater examples have yet to emerge in the literature. Large-scale initiatives such as those developed for the Ogallala aquifer in the High Plains in the United States of America may have achieved some impact in attenuating the rate of decline of regional water tables. However, they have come too late to keep the agricultural systems productive for more than two or three generations (White and Kromm, 1995).
The perception and understanding of hydrogeological processes among groundwater users appear to vary considerably (White and Kromm, 1995; Shah, 1993,). Equally, the levels of information required in order to prompt adequate management responses will vary with: the nature of the aquifer (deep conservative or shallow 'flashy' systems); the level of technology applied (handpumps or high-capacity shaft-driven pumps); and the nature of the media (handdrawn maps or Web-accessed data). In many cases, a simple message about overabstraction or pollution may be sufficient to prompt a collective response by the community of groundwater users, provided it is the right information. In the case of the Ogallala, the initial public perception about recharge of the aquifer was erroneous. Only when it was too late did a more realistic perception plant itself in the minds of the users (White and Kromm, 1995). Local knowledge about groundwater-level fluctuations in shallow systems is often sophisticated and involves customary regulation in times of dry-season, water-table recession. For example, such behaviour occurs with the linear alluvial aquifer in Yemen and the more expansive basalt aquifers in Eritrea. Under these circumstances, although the social perspective may be realistic, it will not necessarily inhibit overabstraction. With shallow circulation systems, pumping local aquifers intensively before dry-season recession sets in may be a sustainable strategy in terms of local food security. However, this paradox begs several questions concerning:
the level of precision required to understand and communicate hydrogeological processes;
the degree to which patterns and intensity of resource use can be assessed;
the degree to which risk can be assessed, given the levels of uncertainty and limitations of available data;
whether current data lend insights into key questions of access and system dynamics.
It is not possible to answer all these questions. Much of the hydrogeological data that is currently collected has little real meaning in relation to the core issues facing users. The level data do not give much indication as to whether users have access to a reliable source of water supply. In addition, they are unlikely to provide much insight into the flow dynamics necessary to really 'manage' an aquifer.
The need to find practical management practices would suggest that it is important to examine: (i) people's coping (adaptive) strategies, i.e. what populations do when faced with groundwater scarcity problems (water harvesting, alternative livelihoods and demographic shifts); and (ii) the policy implications (drought relief, climate-change response, investment directions, institutional forms). However, to date, no comprehensive analysis with specific application to groundwater has been carried out. Some limited information with respect to the impacts of irrigation and poverty is being compiled for an FAO study (FAO, 2003b) but this will cover a mix of surface and groundwater irrigation systems.
The absence of an ability to 'manage' aquifers on a sustainable basis is no reason for inaction. Adaptive strategies that build on existing patterns of social change (e.g. where drought is used as an opportunity to move populations toward more sustainable livelihood patterns) could represent an alternative to groundwater focused 'management' strategies. In order to identify potential opportunities for this type of strategy, it is necessary to gain a better understanding of:
who is actually affected by emerging groundwater problems (equity, etc.);
what individuals communities and local governments are actually doing to address such problems;
the short- or long-term coping strategies individuals follow when faced with water scarcity;
the patterns of social and economic change that affect groundwater use and management options but that are not in themselves a response to perceived water management needs, e.g. changes in community characteristics occurring in response to globalization.
Better understanding of the above could help to develop a more realistic 'adaptive' strategy rather than a technocratic 'management' strategy for responding to groundwater problems. It should result in the identification of a wide variety of practical points for intervention.
