Community Management of groundwater

Provision Problems

Provision problems center on maintaining or enhancing the productive capacity of a common pool resource. In relation to groundwater basins, provision problems may take the form of mining, in which more water is withdrawn from a basin than is replenished and water tables decline over time. Mining produces a host of problems besides the obvious one of using up the water. Soil compaction and subsidence occur as water is withdrawn and the sand and gravel that compose the basin compact. If a groundwater basin is hydrologically connected to surface streams and rivers, mining may dry up surface water sources as water tables decline. As surface water sources and water tables decline, aquatic life, riparian vegetation, and the birds and animals dependent on it die off (Blomquist 1992).

Provision problems also include water quality. Basins may be polluted by industrial and municipal wastes, agricultural runoff, and inadequate or improper disposal and treatment of human and animal waste. Mining and water quality problems combine in the form of salt water intrusion. Coastal basins are highly susceptible to salt water intrusion as water tables decline, the hydrologic pressure that the fresh water of the basin exerts against the salt water declines and salt water invades the fresh water. While it is possible to halt the spread of salt water, it is very difficult and costly to reclaim portions of basins that have been polluted by salt water (Blomquist 1992).

Provision problems do not only center on degradation, they may also include the failure to take advantage of opportunities to enhance the productive capacities of common pool resources. In the case of groundwater basins this typically takes the form of failing to use their full storage capacity. The unfilled storage space may be taken advantage of and surface water may be captured and placed underground for use at a later time. Of course, enhancement, if not carefully managed or attended to can result in degradation of surface soils in the form of waterlogging, a common problem among some canal irrigation systems.

Provision problems are especially challenging to address, both for local communities of resource users and regional and national governments. Challenges stem from the physical structure of groundwater basins and the path of groundwater development. To learn the structure of groundwater basins involves highly technical and costly studies. Also, provision problems often only become apparent after people have invested heavily in groundwater production making them reluctant to limit their pumping.

Provision problems tend to be extensive, not localized like appropriation problems. It may take well owners years to detect longer term declines of water tables, as water tables may vary from year to year. Even if well owners suspect long term declines, their magnitudes and causes may be difficult to determine without considerable effort and investment in hydro-geologic studies. Such studies may take years to complete as the boundaries and structure of the basin must be determined, the storage capacity identified, and the rates of natural recharge and pumping volumes computed. No single well owner, or community of well owners, is likely to have the expertise or sufficient resources to invest in such studies. Even if a community undertook such a study, and developed information about a basin, it is unlikely the community, acting alone, could resolve the problem of mining. Mining affects the multiple communities or clusters of groundwater users scattered across a basin and would require widespread participation to resolve. A similar argument may be made for the other types of provision problems. Developing reliable information about groundwater basins requires considerable time and investment in technical studies. It is not information that water users can develop by monitoring their wells and speaking with their neighbors.

Solutions to provision problems often take the form of public goods. If provided, they benefit all users of the common pool resource, whether or not the users contributed to their realization. Consequently, solutions to provision problems are likely to be plagued by freeriding issues. The provision of public goods has been exhaustively studied in the social sciences. While people voluntarily cooperate and contribute to the provision of public goods at higher rates than economic models predict, voluntary cooperation typically does not occur at sufficient levels to fully provide public goods, and if high levels of cooperation do emerge, such levels are usually quite fragile (Jones 2001) . Individual well owners, or communities of groundwater users may be inclined to cooperate to develop basin wide solutions to provision problems, but it is unlikely that they will be successful without some form of external assistance and support to at least dampen freeriding problems.

Freeriding issues are not the only, or even necessarily, the primary challenge to developing solutions to provision problems. Rather, the primary challenges emerge from the path of groundwater development. By the time that provisions problems emerge and become sufficiently severe to draw groundwater users’ attention, groundwater users will have heavily invested in particular patterns of use, patterns of use that they will only very reluctantly change, even if they are unsustainable. Addressing provision problems, such as mining or salt water intrusion require that users limit and reduce their pumping of groundwater and forego the income and other valued activities that pumping made possible. Furthermore, groundwater users may also have to invest in public goods to recover or maintain the groundwater basin, such as recharge projects to increase the amount of water stored in the basin, or different sources of surface water to supplement groundwater. Given the very difficult physical, social, and economic challenges surrounding provision problems and their solutions, groundwater users, in general, will not be able to address such problems without assistance.

Shah (1993) describes the situation of a coastal village of Mangrol taluka, Gujarat. The wells closest to the sea are saline and unfit for irrigation and the fields watered from those wells are barely productive. A middle belt of fields and wells are just beginning to experience salinity, however, the expectation is that they too will succumb to the migrating sea water within a few years. A belt of fields and wells further inland have not yet experienced salinity. While the farmers know what is happening, they are reluctant to address the problem. For those whose fields have been rendered unproductive, limiting pumping is unlikely to be effective unless it is matched with active recharge programs. They view their situation as hopeless, the resource has been so degraded that there is little that they can do that would make a difference. For those who are just beginning to experience salinity, they are unwilling to limit their pumping. They believe that limiting pumping would not protect them from salinity, unless everyone limited pumping. That would only occur, if additional sources of water were developed, so that no one would have to cut back on water use. Those further inland were not experiencing problems and were not interested in developing solutions (Shah 1993: 168-169).

Once a race to pump groundwater develops, it is difficult to interrupt, even if regional or national governments intervene. For instance, groundwater pumpers and state governments in the western U.S. have been struggling with governing groundwater resources sustainably for the past several decades, with only mixed success. Blomquist (1992) details several case studies of groundwater basins in southern California in which groundwater users, city and county governments, and the state of California were able to arrest groundwater mining and saltwater intrusion in a handful of instances. For instance, West Basin underlies much of the coastal portion of Los Angeles County. West Basin is relatively vulnerable. It adjoins the Pacific Ocean on one side and because the basin is covered with impermeable clays, recharge occurs almost entirely through water discharges from Central basin, the groundwater basin directly upstream of it (Blomquist, 1992: 33). West basin began to experience degradation problems in 1912. By the end of the 1950s, “with water levels down 200 feet in some places, an accumulated over-draft of more than 800,000 acre-feet, and a half-million acre-feet of salt-water underlying thousands of acres of land and advancing on two fronts, the groundwater supply in West Basin was threatened with destruction” (Blomquist 1992:102). Over the course of 50 years, the groundwater users, local and regional governments, California courts and the legislature were able to craft a series of solutions that arrested groundwater mining and halted salt water intrusion. The solutions involved limiting pumping, although not to the level of natural recharge; building surface water projects to import water from other areas of the state; building and operating recharge basins in the Central basin; and investing in a series of injection wells in which a barrier of freshwater was built to halt the spread of saltwater.

Relations between Groundwater Users and Governments

As numerous scholars have noted, the groundwater revolution has largely occurred outside of the purview of governments (Johnson 1986; Shah 1993; Meinzen-Dick 2000). Private citizens have produced the groundwater revolution through their decisions to invest in well technologies and place the groundwater to productive use. As Shah (1993: ix-x) states, “compared to large dams and canal systems, ‘managing’ groundwater is an entirely different proposition and that no one (that I met or had known about)… seemed to give much thought to what is involved in regulating the actions of millions of independent private pumpers scattered through the length and breadth of India who are the main players in this game”. Governments are unlikely to be the primary or the dominant players in groundwater as they have been in the development and operation of canal irrigation systems. The question that ultimately must be addressed is what roles governments have to play in ensuring the sustainable and equitable use and governance of groundwater basins.

As Stern, et al. (2002) note, one of the most understudied areas in the field of common pool resource governance is the linkages and relations among local communities and higher level governments and organizations. Young (2002) argues that developing productive, complementary relations is challenging because local communities and regional and national governments often have conflicting and competing interests in how common pool resources should be governed and used. For instance, national governments tend to view common pool resources as valuable for producing national revenues, either through granting concessions to multinational corporations to harvest timber, or to encouraging farmers to raise multiple cash crops. Local resource users tend to view common pool resources as the foundation for their livelihoods and are not as interested in generating foreign exchange, or other revenue generating activities for their national governments or government officials. Ostrom (1992), like Young (2002) urges giving greater weight to local interests and greater decision making authority to local resource users rather than external government officials. Local resource users are more likely to attempt to address their most pressing needs, which are directly related to the productivity of common pool resources. Developing productive relations involves processing the inevitable conflict that will arise between organizations and governments at different social scales.

It is with great caution that I tread into this area. Generally, productive relations tap into the strengths of local communities and of higher level organizations and match them to the particular common pool resource dilemma facing the resource users. Appropriation problems, as argued above, tend to be localized, with both causes and solutions hinging on time and place information. Since resource users have ready access to and familiarity with time and place information, they are likely to be in the better position to address such problems. Consequently, government roles should be more limited, such as assisting resource users in developing information about activities and practices contributing to appropriation problems, providing users with access to conflict resolution mechanisms, and by recognizing as legitimate the rules that resources users devise. Supportive roles for governments may also involve redesigning or repealing rules that adversely affect the ability of resource users to address appropriation problems. As Shah (1993) so forcefully argued, electric board pricing policies have a powerful effect on the actions of owners of electric wells. Pricing policies may need to be redesigned to provide more appropriate incentives for well owners to address appropriation problems. In the U.S. state of Arizona, agriculture groundwater use is closely tied to the level and extent of the national government’s crop subsidies. As long as the national government continues to prop up the price of cotton, a water thirsty crop, agricultural groundwater use is likely to remain high, even in the face of declining water tables. In other instances, governments may want to back away from directly and actively regulating assignment and technological externalities.

Provision problems call for the development of different types of productive and complementary relations. The causes of provision problems tend to extend across a basin, affecting many communities of groundwater users and not single communities, as appropriation problems do. Solutions too will often require the active participation of many of the groundwater users scattered across the basin. Consequently, communities of groundwater users will likely need the active assistance of higher levels of government in order to adequately address provision problems. Given the public goods nature of solutions to provision problems, such as developing alternative sources of water or developing a series of recharge projects, the temptation may be to assign primary responsibility for provision problems to governments. That, however, would be a mistake, if for no other reason than the solutions, to be workable, require the active participation of groundwater users. Effective solutions that reduce or eliminate mining, or stop the intrusion of salt water into a basin, require that groundwater users accept limits on pumping. Developing alternative sources of water will only have the desired effect of reducing or eliminating groundwater mining if groundwater users switch to the alternative sources and reduce their groundwater pumping. Often times, groundwater users will not limit their pumping, unless limits are prerequisites for the development of alternative sources of water.

For instance, in the U.S., the state of Arizona lobbied the national government for decades to have a large project built to deliver Colorado River water to those areas of the state experiencing serious groundwater overdrafts. Congress eventually authorized the multi-billion dollar project, but did not provide funding for it. Almost a decade later, the President agreed not to oppose funding for the project if the state of Arizona developed a groundwater code that placed limits on pumping. The governor of Arizona used the “threat” from the President to facilitate the development of a groundwater code written by the major groundwater users. The code grandfathered in existing uses and placed strict limits on new uses of groundwater. It also included a series of conservation measures to limit wasteful uses of groundwater. The national government funded and built the large surface water project.

Resolving provision problems requires both demand and supply activities (Shah 1993). Simply providing additional sources of water will not solve provision problems. The additional supply of water can be devoted to the development of new uses of water and not to addressing provision problems. Limits on pumping have to be adopted if alternative sources of water are to have their desired effect. Limiting demand alone without providing additional sources of water is extraordinarily difficult to accomplish. Water users are unlikely to agree to or abide by pumping limits unless they are provided alternative sources of water. Even if a government decided to adopt pumping limits without the support of groundwater users, the government would be unlikely to adequately monitor and enforce the limits. Monitoring hundreds, if not thousands, of wells owned by people hostile to pumping limits would be a daunting task.

Ideally, the form that productive and complementary relations among communities of groundwater users and higher levels of government are likely to take will vary depending on the nature of the common pool resource dilemma to be addressed. In many instances, appropriation problems can be addressed by groundwater users with little support from governments. In general, governments can be most helpful by encouraging resource users to solve their appropriation problems and by reducing any regulatory or legal barriers standing in the way of self-governing solutions. Provision problems are much more difficult and costly to address and require close coordination between resource users and governments. Effective solutions require the expertise, resources, and authority of higher level governments to supply public goods and the expertise, resources, and authority of resource users to change how and how much they use groundwater and to help shape the type, form, and location of public goods provided by governments. Provision problems are difficult to resolve. In many instances in the western U.S. states and water users have managed to slow the progression of provision problems. In many fewer instances states and water users have managed to resolve provision problems and restore groundwater basins to a very productive level of functioning.

Conclusion

Over the past twenty years considerable theoretical and empirical work has been conducted concerning the conditions under which resource users are likely to develop their own governing arrangements as well as the structure and operation of those arrangements. In relation to water, most attention has been devoted to canal irrigation systems. Nevertheless, theory and case studies suggest that local level governance of groundwater basins is possible and desirable. A growing body of groundwater case studies demonstrates that groundwater users are capable of devising solutions to common pool resource dilemmas that are local in nature. More complex and extensive common pool resource dilemmas, however, often require more collaborative efforts between resource users and regional and national governments.

Governments alone will not be able to address such problems without the active cooperation of groundwater users. For instance, halting the mining of groundwater requires groundwater users to change their pumping patterns, to switch to alternative sources of water, to be more frugal in their uses of water, and to invest in and participate in the development of a variety of public goods, such as recharge projects. Since in most groundwater basins there will be hundreds of wells, most of which will not be registered or metered, it is unlikely that a government will have the information, authority, or political fortitude to devise, monitor, and enforce a workable set of rules and regulations. The active cooperation and participation of well owners will be required. A similar argument holds for the likely failure of groundwater users to address mining problems without the assistance of governments. The scale and complexity of such problems are often times out of the reach of groundwater users to address alone.

The shape and form of productive and complementary relations among resource users and different organizations and governments is not well understood and requires substantial investigation. A common approach advocated by many scholars in the U.S. is the use of an integrated, centralized authority whose boundaries would coincide with those of the ecosystem to be managed. In theory, an integrated, centralized authority would have the ability to take into account the many problems, competing uses, and conflicts within a watershed or groundwater basin and effectively address them in a coordinated and comprehensive manner. Such an approach is argued to be a substantial improvement over what occurs in practice: A multitude of specialized agencies and organizations operating at different scales, working at cross-purposes, failing to address critical problems that fall outside of their missions, with no one of them attending to the ecosystem as a whole (Blomquist and Schlager 2005).

Integrated management approaches are rarely adopted. Rather than disbanding themselves to be integrated within a centralized organization, the many different organizations and governments found within a basin often cobble together collaborative arrangements on an “as needed” basis (Blomquist and Schlager 2005). While the advocates of integration blame politics for the failure to adopt integrated approaches and view collaborative arrangements with suspicion, there may be sound reasons why resource users and government officials eschew such approaches. First, substituting a “natural” boundary for a political boundary is unlikely to resolve conflicts over whom, and whose interests, should be included within such a governing arrangement. As Blomquist and Schlager (2005: x) argue, “Geographical contours of watersheds do contain hydrological causes and effects, but not social, economic or other causes or effects. The determination of which communities to include in watershed governance is not resolved with a topographical map any more easily than with a political one”. Second, how decision making should be structured to ensure all interests and issues are fairly considered is unclear. Consensus is unlikely to work well on such a large scale and may be subject to holdouts. However, other forms of decision making, such as majority voting, means that minority interests and problems are likely to be ignored (Blomquist and Schlager 2005). Third, organizations, like people, struggle with making choices among incommensurable alternatives, such as riparian protection, domestic water uses, and industrial development (Jones 2001). Consequently, an integrated basin authority is no more likely to produce rational comprehensive decisions than is a collaborative approach.

Groundwater basins and large scale canal irrigation systems present challenging governance issues that are often avoided, ignored, or made to disappear within the black box of integrated management (Chambers 1988; Ostrom 1992; Blomquist and Schlager 2005). Even if a workable set of arrangements is devised that adequately address appropriation and provision problems, governance challenges do not end. As Ostrom (1992: 63) argues, “It is necessary to stress the ongoing nature of the process of crafting institutions, since it is so frequently described (if discussed at all) as a one-shot effort to organize farmers. … Without the continuing capacity to match new rules to new circumstances, successful irrigation systems face considerable difficulties in coping with the diverse environmental and strategic threats that arise in dynamic systems.”

Bibliography

Agrawal, Arun. 2002. “Common Resources and Institutional Stability” in The Drama of the Commons. Edited by Elinor Ostrom, Thomas Dietz, Nives Dolsak, Paul C. Stern, Susan Sonich, and Elke U. Weber. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, pp. 41-86.

Bardhan, Pranab and Jeff Dayton-Johnson. 2002. “Unequal Irrigators: Heterogeneity and Commons Management in Large-Scale Multivariate Research” in The Drama of the Commons. Edited by Elinor Ostrom, Thomas Dietz, Nives Dolsak, Paul C. Stern, Susan Sonich, and Elke U. Weber. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, pp.87-112.