Addressing the Groundwater Governance Challenge

The document examines the complexities of groundwater governance, distinguishing it from surface water management due to the resource's invisibility and dispersed private exploitation. It highlights the critical interdependence between governance and technical monitoring, using the Netherlands as a model for integrated data collection. A global diagnostic reveals significant gaps in actor participation, legal harmonization, and policy scope across different stages of management development. The paper also addresses the scarcity of dedicated international treaties for the 592 identified transboundary aquifers and concludes with a strategic roadmap for 2030 to prevent irreversible degradation of aquifer systems.

• Groundwater governance differs fundamentally from surface water governance because groundwater exploitation is highly dispersed and primarily managed by the private sector, meaning management requires influencing the behavior of numerous individuals rather than managing large public infrastructure.
• Effective groundwater governance is interdependent with monitoring and assessment; monitoring provides the necessary data to understand the resource, while good governance provides the legal and financial framework to maintain monitoring networks.
• The Netherlands serves as a case study for successful governance where the 2009 Water Law facilitates a multi-level monitoring system involving national, provincial, and municipal authorities, supported by volunteer participation and a publicly accessible database (DINOloket) containing data from approximately 70,000 wells.
• A global diagnostic identifies four main components of groundwater governance—actors, legal frameworks, policies, and information/knowledge—and notes that in many countries, stakeholder participation is poor and government agencies suffer from fragmented mandates and insufficient budgets.
• Countries typically progress through three stages of groundwater policy: a 'pre-management stage' focused only on short-term water supply, an 'initial management stage' characterized by reactive crisis management, and an 'advanced management stage' featuring proactive, integrated, and periodically updated management plans.
• Despite the identification of 592 transboundary aquifers globally, there is a severe lack of dedicated international legal instruments; only six agreements are specifically dedicated to transboundary aquifers, including the Guaraní and Nubian Sandstone aquifers.
• The proposed Global Vision for 2030 argues that groundwater should not be managed in isolation but conjunctively with other water sources and harmonized with land management and subsurface space co-governance.

APA

de Chaisemartin, M., Varady, R. G., Megdal, S. B., Conti, K. I., van der Gun, J., Merla, A., Nijsten, G.-J., & Scheibler, F. (2017). Addressing the Groundwater Governance Challenge. Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research. https://iai.int/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Addressing-the-Groundwater-Governance-Challenge-c.pdf

Chicago

de Chaisemartin, Marguerite, Robert G. Varady, Sharon B. Megdal, Kirstin I. Conti, Jac van der Gun, Andrea Merla, Geert-Jan Nijsten, and Friedemann Scheibler. Addressing the Groundwater Governance Challenge. Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, 2017. https://iai.int/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Addressing-the-Groundwater-Governance-Challenge-c.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=de Chaisemartin |first1=Marguerite |last2=Varady |first2=Robert G. |last3=Megdal |first3=Sharon B. |last4=Conti |first4=Kirstin I. |last5=van der Gun |first5=Jac |last6=Merla |first6=Andrea |last7=Nijsten |first7=Geert-Jan |last8=Scheibler |first8=Friedemann |title=Addressing the Groundwater Governance Challenge |publisher=Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research |date=2017 |url=https://iai.int/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Addressing-the-Groundwater-Governance-Challenge-c.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{dechaisemartin2017addressing, author = {de Chaisemartin, Marguerite and Varady, Robert G. and Megdal, Sharon B. and Conti, Kirstin I. and van der Gun, Jac and Merla, Andrea and Nijsten, Geert-Jan and Scheibler, Friedemann}, title = {{Addressing the Groundwater Governance Challenge}}, institution = {Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research}, year = {2017}, url = {https://iai.int/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Addressing-the-Groundwater-Governance-Challenge-c.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }