New project to improve groundwater governance awarded €2.5 million in EU funding

Half the world’s population depends on groundwater for its water supply. But nearly a third of the world’s largest aquifers is under threat because the water is used faster than it is replenished. A new research project led by Margreet Zwarteveen, IHE Delft Professor of Water Governance, and financed by a European Research Council (ERC) grant, will help to re-think, improve and support the governance of groundwater.

Agriculture accounts for almost 70 percent of the world’s total groundwater use. Initiatives to stop depletion have not been effective, largely because they focus on efforts to curb the water-greed of individual farmers, without addressing political-economic pressures to intensify pumping, partly by government-led programmes. The Aquiverse project seeks to reframe groundwater governance by highlighting the actions of farmers who take care of and share the aquifers they depend on for their livelihoods. And emphasizing that good groundwater use and management cannot be seen in isolation from the wider transformations needed to live sustainably on this planet.

“The ERC Advanced Grant will make it possible to push the search for solutions to groundwater depletion in new directions,” Zwarteveen said. “It allows to expand government-led ‘command-and-control’ approaches with a deeper appreciation and support for how communities are already protecting, restoring and caring for the aquifers they rely on for their livelihoods.”

Ground-breaking

The research project is a collaborative study of six initiatives that care for aquifers; of communities who engage in recharge, protection, conservation and recovery in India, Peru and Morocco – countries that face acute groundwater pressure. The project will consider how these initiatives re-shape not just people’s connections with aquifers, but also with each other. In this way, the project contributes to new ways of understanding society- groundwater dynamics. 

Collaborative learning

The studies will research how the selected communities navigate pressures to intensify groundwater use by developing technologies and institutions to care for and share their aquifers. These are sometimes inspired by traditional wisdom.  

• In the Indian Himalayas, a non-governmental organization is experimenting with an approach that aims to help communities understand the largely invisible hydrologic connections between different springs and channels to rejuvenate dried-up springs.
• Renewal of water storage tanks in southern Indian villages enables communities to manage their own water storage, protecting them from recurring droughts, floods and monsoons. 
• In Peru, traditional irrigation, water harvesting and recharge techniques by smallholder farmers provide an interesting comparison to the aquifer decline caused by agro-export companies.
• In Peru’s Andean highlands, communities are creating and maintaining lakes that feed high-altitude marshes, retaining rainwater that replenish downstream aquifers. 
• In the Moroccan town of Boudnib, the rehabilitation of an indigenous system for storing and distributing groundwater known as khettara that is under pressure from  increased water use  by commercial farmers, and by dam construction. 
• In Morocco’s Drâa Valley, smallholder farmers are developing new rules for sharing water following the introduction of intensified watermelon farming by outside investors which requires large quantities of groundwater.

Groundwater governance

The Aquiverse project aims to advance the science of groundwater governance, importantly by better appreciating  and considering what community do and can do to care for aquifers. Ultimately, Aquiverse’s aims to promote more sustainable and just ways of using groundwater. 

IHE Delft Rector Eddy Moors welcomed the grant, saying that groundwater is often poorly understood, undervalued and mismanaged, as noted in the UN World Water Development Report 2022: Making the invisible visible. “Improved understanding of people’s connection to groundwater will help develop better governance of groundwater and guide solutions to the perceived conflicts between the human right to water and the processes related to agriculture,” he said.

ERC Advanced Grant

Aquiverse is one of 281 cutting-edge projects to receive the prestigious EU ERC Advanced Grant. The ERC awards the Advanced Grants to ground-breaking, ambitious projects led by active researchers who have a track-record of significant research achievements. The new grants are part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme. They give researchers an opportunity to pursue ambitious projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs.