Groundwater Governance in Asia

Transcription

1 Institute IWMI is a Futures Harvest Center Supported by the CGIAR III World Water Forum Water, Food and Environment Groundwater Governance in Asia 17th March 2003 Room E, Kyoto International Conference Hall [KICH] IWMI Website:

2 World Water Council 3rd World Water Forum The 3rd World Water Forum March 16-23, 2003 in Kyoto. Shiga and Osaka, Japan Water, Food and Environment Groundwater Governance in Asia th 17 March 2003; 15:45-18:30 ORGANISATION International Water Management Institute [IWMI] CONVENER Dr. Tushaar Shah [ t.shah@cgiar.org] CONTACT Shilp Verma [ s.verma@cgiar.org] VENUE Room E, Kyoto International Conference Hall [KICH] Time Speaker Affiliation Title The Challenge Tushaar Shah IWMI-India The Challenge of Groundwater Governance in Asia Aditi Mukherji IWMI-India Groundwater Socio-ecology of South Asia: Results of a Survey of 2630 Tubewell Owners in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh Asad Qureshi IWMI-Pakistan Protecting Food and Livelihoods Security through Conjunctive Water Management: The Challenge of Groundwater Governance in Pakistan Punjab M Mainuddin IWMI-SE Asia Poverty Alleviation versus Mass Poisoning: The Dilemma of Groundwater Irrigation in Bangladesh Is Asia Meeting the Challenge? Technocratic Approaches Shilp Verma IWMI-India More Crop per Drop: Can Micro-Irrigation Help Alleviate the Groundwater Depletion? Dinesh Kumar IWMI-India Micro-management of Groundwater: IWMI's Experiment in North Gujarat Shamjibhai Antala Saurastra Lok Manch Can Mass Movement for Decentralized Water Harvesting and Recharge help Cope with Groundwater Depletion? Lessons from Western India Regulatory Approaches Chetan Pandit Ministry of Water Sustainable Groundwater Management: Should India Resources, GoI pursue Aggressive Regulation? Ajaya Dixit Nepal Water Debates over Groundwater Institutions in Nepal: Do Conservation Western Models Apply to Nepali Conditions? Foundation Jinxia Wang Center for Chinese Sustainable Groundwater Management: How Agricultural Policy, Effective has Groundwater Regulation been in North CAS China Plains? Christopher Scott IWMI-India Sustainable Groundwater Management: Have Property Rights Reforms helped in Mexico? Eran Feitelson Hebrew University Sustainable Groundwater Management: Has of Jerusalem Regulation worked in Israel, the Mecca of Water Management? Search for Strategic Approaches Marcus Moench ISET Need to Search for Adaptive Approaches Tushaar Shah IWMI-India Strategic Approaches to Indirect Management of the Groundwater Economy Open Discussion Facilitated by Dr. Frank Rijberman (IWMI) 2

3 GROUNDWATER GOVERNANCE IN ASIA Problems, Opportunities and Sustainable Alternatives Groundwater research in Asia has tended to deploy too much hydro-geology and too little social science, and virtually no hydro-institutional and policy analysis that blends the physical with the social in a unified framework. Most Asian countries have strong national research establishments in groundwater hydrology. As a result, the science of groundwater relationships is fairly well understood; however, the social science of groundwater institutions and policies remain enigmatic. The contribution of science to evolving effective mechanisms for the governance of groundwater has been far more modest that it can be. Groundwater science establishment talks little to policy makers; while the former is interested primarily in the resource, the latter are concerned with the people. This gap between the world of science and the world of policy action is already proving lethal for Asia's aqvatic environment as well as the livelihoods of its poor. This discussion group aims to generate, discuss and propagate alternative approaches to groundwater governance by studying the groundwater economy as a socio-ecological system. The basic premise is that good science and informed policy discussion can stimulate strategic players in the Asian water scene to forge groundwater governance mechanisms which are suited to Asia's genius and its contextual realities. Doing this requires that, as in research establishments in the North, science in Asia focuses on the 'bigger picture'of policies, institutions, resource management strategies all of which are at the heart of good groundwater governance. GROUNDWATER SOCIO-ECOLOGIES OF ASIA Arid alluvial plains Humid alluvial plains Inter-mountainous valleys Coastal plains Hard rock areas HYDRO- GEOLOGICAL SETTINGS Major Alluvial Plains SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES Resource Depletion* Optimizing Conjunctive Use** Arid o Humid Coastal plains o Inter-Montane o Valleys Hardrock Areas O 3 Secondary Salinization *** Natural Groundwater Quality Concerns

4 The central aim of the group discussion then is to understand the barriers to proactive groundwater governance in those parts of Asia where groundwater socio-ecologies face serious threat. Several possibilities need exploration: 1. General apathy and lack of political will, or mass-resistance to certain interventions; 2. Primary solutions identified based on best practices elsewhere in the world do not easily fit and need to be 'adapted' or even re-engineered to fit the Asian context; 3. New solutions grounded in the Asian reality need to be explored and 'extracted'; 4. Local approaches-and popular responses-to groundwater problems in worst-hit groundwater socio-ecologies need to be studied seriously for their potential to offer large-scale solutions; 5. Cross-learning amongst Asian sub-regions needs to be explored to forge new, context-specific solutions. IWMI's past research to understand the dynamics of groundwater socio-ecologies indicates some recurring patterns. In much of South Asia, for example, the rise and fall of local groundwater economies follow a 4-stage progression outlined in the figure below which is self-explanatory. It underpins the typical progression of a socioecology from a stage where unutilized groundwater resource potential becomes the instrument of unleashing an agrarian boom to one in which, unable to apply brakes in time, it goes overboard in exploiting its groundwater. Population Pressure Drives Groundwater Expansion *Pakistan includes data for Pakistan Punjab Number of pumps in Pakistan multiplied by 3, as average capacity of pumps is 3 times that of India # Pump data not available for Indian states of Rajasthan, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh Number of Energized Pumps 1Dot = 5000 Density of Population ( person/sq.km) Below Above 1000 No Data Kilometers The four-stage framework outlined in the figure emphasizes the transition that Asian policy makers and groundwater managers need to make from a resource development mindset to a resource management mode. In stage I and early times of stage II, the prime concern is to promote the profitable use of a valuable, renewable resource for generating wealth and economic surplus; however, in stage II itself, the thinking needs to change towards careful management of the resource. In South Asian countries, vast regions are already in stage III or even IV; and yet, the policy regime ideal for stage I and II have tended to become 'sticky' and to persist long after a region moves into stage III or even IV. IWMI's recent work in North China plains suggests that the story is much the same there as well. The critical issue to address is: does stage IV always have to play out the way it has in the past? Or, are there adaptive policy and management responses in stage II that can generate a steady-state equilibrium which sustains the groundwater-induced agrarian boom without degrading the resource itself? Why do we not see, anywhere in Asia, an initiative designed to achieve such steady-state equilibrium? The challenge of this session is of exploring what works in the Asian context and what does not, and to understand why. And to produce useful outcomes, such research has to rest on all the three pillars of groundwater governance: technical relationships, institutional variables, and management and policy analysis. 4

5 RISE AND FALL OF GROUNDWATER SOCIO-ECOLOGIES IN SOUTH ASIA INTERVENTIONS CHARACTERISTICS EXAMPLES STAGES Stage I The Rise of Green Revolution and Tubewell Technologies North Bengal and North Bihar, Nepal Terai, Orissa, Vietnam Subsistence Agriculture; Protective Irrigation Traditional crops; Concentrated Rural Poverty; Traditional Water Lifting Devices using Human and Animal Power Targeted Subsidy on Pump Capital; Public Tubewell Programmes; Electricity Subsidies and Flat Tariff. Stage II Groundwater-based Agrarian Boom Eastern Uttar Pradesh; Western Godavari; Central and South Gujarat; Northern Sri Lanka; Chao Phraya in Thailand; Baluchistan Skewed Ownership of Tubewells; Access to Pump Irrigation Prized; Rise of Primitive Pump Irrigation `Exchange' Institutions. Decline of Traditional Water Lifting Technologies; Rapid Growth in Agrarian Income and Employment Subsidies Continue. Institutional Credit for Wells and Pumps. Donors Augment Resources for Pump Capital; NGOs Promote Small Farmer Irrigation as a Livelihood Programme. Stage III Early Symptoms Groundwater Over-draft Haryana, Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh, Central Tamilnadu; Bangladesh; Pakistan Punjab Crop Diversification; Permanent Decline in Water Tables. The GWbased `Bubble Economy' Continues Booming; But Tensions Between Economy and Ecology Surface as Pumping Costs Soar and Water Market become Oppressive; Private and Social Costs of GW use Part Ways. Subsidies, Credit, Donor and NGO Support Continue Apace; Licensing, Citing Norms and Zoning System are Created but are Weakly Enforced. Groundwater Irrigators Emerge as a Huge, Powerful Vote-bank that Political Leaders can not Ignore. 5 Stage IV Decline of the Groundwater Socio-ecology with Immiserising Impacts. North Gujarat, Coastal Tamilnadu, Coastal Saurashtra, Southern Rajasthan; Hebai, Shanxi, and Henan Provinces in North China The `Bubble' Bursts; Agri. Growth Declines; Pauperization of the Poor is Accompanied by Depopulation of Entire Clusters of Villages. Water Quality Problems Assume Serious Proportions; the `Smart' begin Moving out Long before the Crisis Deepens; the Poor Get Hit the Hardest. Subsidies, Credit and Donor Support Reluctantly go; NGOs, Donors Assume Conservationist Posture Zoning Restrictions begin to Get Enforced With Frequent Pre-election Relaxations; Water Imports begin for Domestic Needs; Variety of Public and NGO Sponsored Ameliorative Action Starts.

6 International Water Management Institute IWMI is one of the 16 Future Harvest Centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The research program of IWMI centers around five core themes: Integrated Water Resource Management for Agriculture; Sustainable Smallholder Water & Land Management Systems; Sustainable Groundwater Management; Water, Health and Environment; and Water Resources institutions and Policy. Sustainable Groundwater Management The goal of IWMI's research in groundwater is to contribute to achieving sustainable use and management of groundwater in ways that promote food and livelihood security for the poor women and Men in Asia and Africa. Under IWMI's strategic plan , ongoing research under this theme has five priorities: [1] Assessment of the extent of groundwater use, its economic value and contribution to agrarian wealth creation; [2] Understanding Basin level impacts of local water harvesting and recharge; [3] Exploring linkages between groundwater irrigation and rural poverty; [4] Analyzing approaches to conjunctive use of surface and groundwater; and [5] Identifying practical approaches to sustainable groundwater management through comparative analysis of institutions and policies. IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program The IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program was launched in 2000 with the support of Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai. The program presents new perspectives and practical solutions derived from the wealth of research done in India on water resource management. Its objective is to help policy makers at the central, state and local levels address their water challenges in areas such as sustainable groundwater management, water scarcity, and rural poverty by translating research findings into practical policy recommendations. IWMI-Tata WATER POLICY PROGRAM Elecon, Anand-Sojitra Road Vallabh Vidyanagar, , Gujarat, India Telephone: Fax : iwmi-tata@cgiar.org Website: HEADQUARTERS 127 Sunil Mawatha, Pelawatte, Battaramulla, Sri Lanka Mailing Address : P. O. Box 2075,Colombo,Sri Lanka Telephone : , ; Fax : E mail : iwmi@cgiar.org REGIONAL OFFICE FOR ASIA (Bangladesh, China, Nepal and Sri Lanka) 127 Sunil Mawatha, Pelawatte, Battaramulla, Sri Lanka Mailing Address : P. O. Box 2075,Colombo, Sri Lanka Telephone : ,784080,1 ; Fax : E mail : iwmi-asia@cgiar.org CHINA Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences Building 917,Datun Road, Anwai, Beijing, , China Telephone : , , Fax : E mail : j.wang@cgiar.org NEPAL GPO 8975 EPC 416, Kathmandu, Nepal Telephone : (Ext. 486) Mobile Tel : ; Fax : E Mail : d.pant@cgiar.org REGIONAL OFFICE FOR AFRICA 141, Cresswell Street, 0184 Silverton, Pretoria, South Africa Mailing Address: Private Bag X813,Silverton 0127, South Africa Telephone : ; Fax : E Mail : iwmi-africa@cgiar.org KENYA C/o. ICRAF, United Nations Avenue, P. O. Box 30677, Nairobi, Kenya Telephone : , ; Fax : E Mail : f.gichuki@cgiar.org GHANA IWMI Ghana,CSIR campus,odei Block, Airport Res. Area, Accra IWMI Ghana, PMB CT 112, Cantoments, Accra, Ghana Telehone : +233-(0) /53/54 ; Fax : +233-(0) E mail : iwmi-ghana@cgiar.org REGIONAL OFFICE FOR INDIA C/o. ICRISAT, Patancheru, AP , India Telephone : ; Fax : E mail : iwmi-india@cgiar.org REGIONAL OFFICE FOR PAKISTAN, CENTRAL ASIA AND MIDDLE EAST 12KM Multan Road, Chowk Thokar Niaz Baig, Lahore 53700,Pakistan Telephone : (4 lines) ; Fax : E mail : iwmi-pak@cgiar.org UZBEKISTAN Apartment NO.103,Home No.6,Murtazaeva Street, Tashkent , Uzbekistan Telephone : ; Fax : E mail : v.hornikova@cgiar.org REGIONAL OFFICE FOR SOUTHEAST ASIA (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines,Thailand,Vietnam) P. O. Box 1025, Kasetsart University Jatujak, Bangkok 10903,Thailand Telephone : ; Fax : E mail : iwmi-sea@cgiar.org