Water Papers
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Water Papers are produced by the Water Global Practice, taking up the work of the predecessor Water Unit, Transport, Water and ICT Department, Sustainable Development Vice Presidency.
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Publication
Kenya Groundwater Governance Case Study
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-06)This report presents a case study on groundwater governance in Kenya. The objectives of the study were to: (a) describe groundwater resource and socioeconomic settings for four selected aquifers; (b) describe governance arrangements for groundwater management in Kenya; and (c) identify the relevance of these arrangements for planning and implementing climate change mitigation measures. The report provides a comprehensive strategy to develop effective groundwater management and a pilot groundwater management plan. Kenya's draft Policy for the Protection of Groundwater provides most of the requirements for improving groundwater governance, including participation and empowerment of groundwater users, decentralization of management to local level, integration of surface and groundwater management, improving monitoring and data collection, identifying sites for managed aquifer recharge (MAR), mapping strategic aquifers and conjunctive use opportunities, and identifying groundwater conservation areas. Groundwater management decision making is sector-based and on the whole ad hoc; there is no mechanism for coordination and for fostering cross-sector linkages. Consequently, the management of groundwater resources has continued to be carried on in isolation from the management of land and other land-based resources, with the inevitable consequence that the implications of management decisions in critical areas such as physical are planning, land use planning, and agricultural activities have often been overlooked. At the same time, groundwater decision making remains overly centralized, with limited real involvement of stakeholder units, such as catchment area advisory committees (CAACs) and water resources user associations (WRUAs). -
Publication
India Groundwater Governance Case Study
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-06)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.