Transformations to Groundwater Sustainability: Joint Learnings from Human-groundwater Interactions, 2020-2023

Cleaver, Frances (2023). Transformations to Groundwater Sustainability: Joint Learnings from Human-groundwater Interactions, 2020-2023. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-856633

Billions of people around the world rely for their everyday existence on groundwater. Its invisibility, however, makes groundwater notoriously difficult
to govern, also complicating efforts to avoid depletion or pollution. This project sets out to comparatively study promising grass-roots initiatives of
people organizing around groundwater in places where pressures on the resource are particularly acute (India, Algeria, Morocco, USA, Chile, Peru,
Tanzania). As these often defy or challenge conventional wisdom, the project's hypothesis is that these initiatives contain creative insights about ways
of dealing with the intrinsic tensions that characterize groundwater governance: between individual and collective interests and between short-term
gains and longer-term sustainability. Focusing on groundwater practices - of knowing, accessing and sharing - we combine qualitative ethnographic
methods with hydrogeological and engineering insights to explore the knowledges, technologies and institutions that characterize these initiatives. Our
aim is to enunciate and normatively assess their logic and functioning in view of tracing overlaps or patterns that allow them to serve as more generic
models for transformations to groundwater sustainability. This effort is inspired by theorizations of water as simultaneously social and natural, builds
on recent critical scholarship on institutions, and has a particular sensitivity to how the distribution and use of groundwater is mediated by
technologies. Our overall aim is to create global action-research collaborations to generate new inspirations for thinking about and dealing with
interconnections and interdependencies between humans and groundwater

Data description (abstract)

The focus of the study was on groundwater practices, encompassing how people understood, accessed, and shared it. By employing qualitative ethnographic methods alongside hydrogeological and engineering insights, the researchers explored the knowledge, technologies, and institutions driving these initiatives. The ultimate goal was to articulate and evaluate their principles and functioning, identifying common patterns that could serve as generic models for achieving groundwater sustainability. The project took inspiration from the idea of water being both a social and natural phenomenon, building on critical scholarship about institutions and being particularly mindful of how technologies influenced groundwater distribution and use. The raw data cannot be shared, but compiled case studies of people's interactions with groundwater in a number of countries are available via related resources.

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