Margreet Zwarteveen, Marcel Kuper, Cristian Olmos-Herrera, Muna Dajani, Jeltsje Kemerink-Seyoum, Frances Cleaver, Linnea Beckett, Flora Lu, Seema Kulkarni, Himanshu Kulkarni, Uma Aslekar, Lowe Börjeson, Andres Verzijl, Carolina Dominguez Guzmán, Maria Teresa Oré, Irene Leonardelli, Lisa Bossenbroek, Hind Ftouhi, Tavengwa Chitata, Tarik Hartani, Amine Saidani, Michelaina Johnson, Aysha Peterson, Sneha Bhat, Sachin Bhopal, Zakaria Kadiri, Rucha Deshmukh, Dhaval Joshi, Hans Komakech, Kerstin Joseph, Ebrania Mlimbila, Chris De Bont, Transformations to groundwater sustainability: from individuals and pumps to communities and aquifers, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability,
Volume 49, 2021, Pages 88-97,

Abstract: If the success of agricultural intensification continues to rely on the depletion of aquifers and exploitation of (female) labour, transformations to groundwater sustainability will be impossible to achieve. Hence, the development of new groundwater imaginaries, based on alternative ways of organizing society-water relations is highly important. This paper argues that a comparative documentation of grass-roots initiatives to care for, share or recharge aquifers in places with acute resource pressures provides an important source of inspiration. Using a grounded anti-colonial and feminist approach, we combine an ethnographic documentation of groundwater practices with hydrogeological and engineering insights to enunciate, normatively assess and jointly learn from the knowledges, technologies and institutions that characterize such initiatives. Doing this usefully shifts the focus of planned efforts to regulate and govern groundwater away from government efforts to control individual pumping behaviours, to the identification of possibilities to anchor transformations to sustainability in collective action.

Read the full open access paper here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2021.03.004.