Groundwater governance: a review of the assessment methodologies

Abstract

Groundwater, the world’s largest and most exploited freshwater resource is a crucial ingredient for global socio-economic development. However, the domination of human-induced drivers such as climate change, rapid demographic escalation, alteration in land use, industrialisation, and an increase in water demand has further stressed the unfrozen freshwater resources. This review provides a comprehensive literature-based analysis on different assessment methodologies for groundwater governance, and critically analysed the applicability and knowledge gaps in the assessment methodologies for evaluating groundwater governance under climatic and nonclimatic stresses. Furthermore, in the absence of a designated groundwater governance framework under stress, the study emphasized the need for developing a ready-to-use groundwater governance framework to assess the existing state of governance, tackling the prevailing knowledge gaps. A multidimensional framework consisting of key groundwater governance elements, the inclusion of the vulnerable and marginalised groups, current and future stressors, and an approach for aggregating multiple elements would overcome the limitations in previous assessment methodologies. Additionally, this framework would contribute to understanding current governance provisions and the capacity to manage those provisions, realise the strengths, gaps, and areas for improvement, and quantitatively visualise the prevailing state of groundwater governance for planning multiple strategies to possible threats and conflicts from the stresses.