Caring for Groundwater

How Care Can Expand and Transform Groundwater Governance

Bibliographic Data

ID12960281
AuthorsMargreet Zwarteveen (0000-0001-7169-1337, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, corresponding author), Carolina Domínguez Guzmán (0000-0001-7843-6910, University of Amsterdam, corresponding author), Marcel Kuper (0000-0002-1240-0592, Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, corresponding author), Mohamed Amine Saidani (0009-0008-6344-4019, Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, corresponding author), Jeltsje Sanne Kemerink-Seyoum (0000-0003-4182-6602, University of Amsterdam, corresponding author), Frances Cleaver (0000-0002-4208-1211, Lancaster University, corresponding author), Himanshu Kulkarni (0000-0002-7099-6988, Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management, corresponding author), Lisa Bossenbroek (0000-0003-1310-619X, Institute for Environmental Sciences, corresponding author), Hind Ftouhi (0000-0003-0625-2279, Institut National d'Aménagement et d'Urbanisme, corresponding author), Andres Verzijl (0000-0002-1492-375X, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, corresponding author), Uma Aslekar (0009-0009-7709-1266, Advanced Center for Water Resources Development and Management, corresponding author), Zakaria Kadiri (0000-0003-1156-7451, University of Hassan II Casablanca, corresponding author), Tavengwa Chitata (0000-0002-4938-1663, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, corresponding author), Irene Leonardelli (0000-0003-4219-4467, University of Calabria, corresponding author), Seema Kulkarni (0000-0002-2373-9065), S N Bhat (0009-0006-4317-3843, Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume18
Issue1
Pages384-396
Publication date2024-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of the Commons (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1875-0281 • E-ISSN: 1875-0281
PublisherUbiquity Press, Ltd. (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5334/ijc.1350
OpenAlexW4395667155
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited31

Efforts to measure and regulate groundwaters and irrigators are notoriously ineffective. The starting point of this article, therefore, is to question the continued faith in techno-managerial solutions to groundwater depletion. We discuss the potential of the conceptual vocabulary of ‘care’ to complement, refresh and expand ways of talking about and doing groundwater governance. Mobilizing a diverse range of examples from places where pressures on aquifers are particularly acute, we do this by exploring what care entails in everyday practices of groundwater use and management. We show that foregrounding care nuances and sometimes challenges stories of users unavoidably depleting aquifers when given the chance and means to do so. Irrigators may display concern about the longer-term sustainability of the aquifers on which their livelihoods depend, even when their own pumping practices are unsustainable. In spite of pressures to intensify and individualize, farmers sometimes do hold on to or creatively develop collective rules to fairly share groundwater and use it sustainably, complementing strategies to make do with what is available with investments in conservation and recharge. Attention to care, moreover, highlights the ongoing processes of tinkering that governing groundwater always entails. The ability to tinker hinges on intimate and often embodied knowledge of a watery place. Accepting the care involved in governing groundwater, our analysis therefore concludes, prompts a re-consideration of what is and who has water expertise, with important implications for the role of ‘outside’ experts. More than a new theory, we propose embracing care as an analytical sensibility, with the study of practices of care serving as one promising way to widen the conceptual and political space for understanding and doing human-groundwater relations

Business · Corporate governance · Environmental planning · Geotechnical engineering · Groundwater · Water resource management · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities · Environmental Science · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Finance · Geology

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