With tales of water insecurity increasingly hitting the headlines, fears of water spilling over into other crises, such as famines and mass migration have become commonplace. But are dwindling water resources an inherent source of conflict? This year’s World Water Week, the world’s leading conference on global water issues, sought to explore this and other interlinkages in the water–peace nexus under the overall theme of ‘Bridging Borders: Water for a Peaceful and Sustainable Future.’
Inspired by this theme, NEXUS Gains convened an in-depth session at World Water Week on groundwater, a vital water resource whose shared and often transboundary nature demands effective cooperation. Titled ‘Managing water from the ground up: Challenges and opportunities’, the event presented groundwater policies and active management cases from Brazil, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and the USA, and identified opportunities for collaborative action to prevent conflict. The session was moderated by Dr Nicole Lefore, Associate Director of Sustainable Agriculture Water Management at the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute (DWFI).
“Groundwater plays an increasingly important role in irrigation and food security. It also acts as a valuable buffer against climatic extremes – storing flood water, which can be pumped during the dry season,” explained Dr Claudia Ringler, Director Natural Resources and Resilience at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and NEXUS Gains’ Co-lead. “However, in a growing number of places, we are taking out more groundwater than we’re returning to aquifers. So how can we actively manage it to meet growing demand?”
Empowering local actors to govern groundwater is essential
To answer this question, NEXUS Gains, in association with DWFI, Valmont Industries and Federal University of Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil assembled experts from around the world to provide insights on groundwater management. Dr Thomas Harter, Professor of Cooperative Extension at the University of California, Davis, provided an overview of active groundwater management in the USA. “The use of groundwater in the United States has led to significant declines, exacerbated by the 21st-century megadrought in the American Southwest,” he explained.
In California, where water security is a growing concern, there has been a push to establish local groundwater control under state supervision. The state now has 250 local Groundwater Sustainability Agencies, each with their own groundwater management plans. “As agencies develop these plans, they must engage with stakeholders,” noted Professor Harter. “We’re seeing that those agencies which engaged best with stakeholders are now implementing their plans more effectively than others.”
Communities win by playing groundwater games
Hagar ElDidi, a Senior Research Analyst at IFPRI, showed another way in which local communities can be empowered to better govern their shared groundwater resources. She reported on a recent USAID-supported groundwater governance project in Ethiopia, where small-scale irrigation has rapidly expanded in recent years. The activity, which more recently also received support from NEXUS Gains, used groundwater games to improve awareness of groundwater systems and resource depletion. Ms ElDidi told attendees: “There were noticeable shifts in participants’ conception of groundwater after playing the games, and a greater understanding that it is a depletable, finite resource.”
Encouragingly, focus group discussions six months after the games were played revealed that they had a long-term positive influence on community thinking. However, few participating villages have so far adopted community rules for groundwater use. “Deeper, longer-term, and targeted engagement with communities is an important next step,” concluded Ms ElDidi. “We need to embed this engagement in larger technical assistance intervention packages by partnering with local, on-the-ground extension services and practitioners.”
Tackling shifting water availability in Brazil’s Mato Grosso
The importance of local groundwater governance has also emerged 10,000 kilometers west of Ethiopia, in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state. Here, the delayed onset of the rainy season due to climate change is significantly reducing maize yields, explained Dr Christopher Neale, Director of Policy at DWFI. To prevent these crop losses, up to 12 million hectares may need to be brought under irrigation in the future.
To assess the sustainability of irrigation expansion, Dr Neale is leading a three-year project using remote sensing to examine surface and groundwater availability in Mato Grosso’s agricultural land. His team is also working with the national water agency to explore methods of local groundwater governance for irrigated areas. “For long-term sustainability, we need to institute a form of local governance,” Dr Neale concluded.
Darren Siekman, Vice President of Policy and Industry Strategy at Valley Irrigation, also reported on important work in Mato Grosso, where his company’s remote-controlled center pivots use real-time data to reduce energy and groundwater usage. “Data is essential – because if we’re not actively monitoring irrigation, that’s when waste happens,” stressed Mr Siekman. “In Mato Grosso, our irrigation technology resulted in a 10–15 percent reduction in water use and an 18-percent increase in yields.”
Groundwater quality maps support sustainable extraction in Punjab
Another perspective on the importance of data – this time from Pakistan’s Punjab Province – was provided by Dr Mohsin Hafeez, Director of Water, Food and Ecosystems at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and NEXUS Gains Basin Coordinator for the Indus. “There are currently 1.1 million unregulated tubewells pumping groundwater in Punjab, lowering water tables and causing soil degradation. And as freshwater and saltwater aquifers mix, water quality is also deteriorating,” explained Dr Hafeez.
Despite this, provincial irrigation departments lack reliable real-time data on groundwater quantity and quality. In response, IWMI conducted a comprehensive groundwater evaluation in Punjab’s Okara District, including physio-chemical and heavy metals analysis. “The analysis revealed that levels of arsenic, nitrate, and total dissolved solids exceeded international permissible limits,” Dr Hafeez reported. More positively, the evaluation also produced detailed groundwater quality maps, which are now being used to advise the provincial government on choosing new sites for tubewells that avoid the most polluted and least sustainable areas.
Groundwater as an opportunity for cooperation
The big themes of the session – local governance and the power of cooperation – were reiterated in the panel discussion and audience questions that concluded the event. Ramon Brentführer, a Policy Adviser for Groundwater at the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, stressed that groundwater management needs to include – and benefit – local communities. “This is why it often makes sense to manage groundwater at a very local, decentralized level – because local communities know their groundwater best,” he said.
On the subject of conflict and cooperation, Dr Ruth Meinzen-Dick, a Senior Research Fellow at IFPRI and a NEXUS Gains work package lead, acknowledged that groundwater’s role in food security could become a potential flashpoint, with the risk that groundwater depletion could worsen hunger and climate migration. “However, while there’s a lot of talk about water wars, water is often a source of cooperation,” she added. “So we need to highlight the shared nature of groundwater and use that to build cooperation.”
Dr Kevin Pieterson, a Groundwater Technical Advisor at the Southern African Development Community (SADC), agreed. “In my experience, water is an opportunity for cooperation. At SADC, we’ve set up multi-country coordination mechanisms for issues that relate to groundwater, such as mining. These mechanisms allow countries to deliberate issues and develop a common understanding of the subject in question.”
A link to watch a recording of the session will be added when it becomes available.
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: Groundwater is extracted through a solar-powered tubewell in Punjab province, Pakistan. Photo by IWMI Pakistan.
