Resource information
Groundwater comprises 97 percent of the
worlds readily accessible freshwater and provides the rural,
urban, industrial and irrigation water supply needs of 2
billion people around the world. As the more easily accessed
surface water resources are already being used, pressure on
groundwater is growing. In the last few decades, this
pressure has been evident through rapidly increasing pumping
of groundwater, accelerated by the availability of cheap
drilling and pumping technologies and, in some countries,
energy subsidies that distort decisions about exploiting
groundwater. This accelerated growth in groundwater
exploitation unplanned, unmanaged, and largely invisible has
been dubbed by prominent hydro geologists the silent
revolution. It is a paradox that such a vast and highly
valuable resource which is likely to become even more
important as climate change increasingly affects surface
water sources has been so neglected by governments and the
development community at a time when interest and support
for the water sector as a whole is at an all-time high. This
case study is a background paper for the World Bank economic
and sector analysis (ESW) entitled too big to fail: the
paradox of groundwater governance that aims to understand
and address the paradox at the heart of the groundwater
governance challenge in order to elevate the need for
investing in and promoting proactive reforms toward its
management. The project examines the impediments to better
governance of groundwater, and explores opportunities for
using groundwater to help developing countries adapt to
climate change. Its recommendations will guide the Bank in
its investments on groundwater and provide the Bank's
contributions to the Global Environment Facility (GEF)
funded global project groundwater governance: a framework
for country action. The case study focused on the national,
state and local levels. At the national and state levels, it
analyzed the policy, legal, and institutional arrangements
to identify the demand and supply management and incentive
structures that have been established for groundwater
management. At the local level, it assessed the operations,
successes, and constraints facing local institutions in the
governance of a number of aquifers within peninsula India,
on the coast and on the plain of the Ganges river valley.
