Groundwater Governance & Management in Pakistan-5: Post # 13

E. Governance at Different Level

1. Concept of Governance? 

United Nations Development Program (2010) defines national governance as: “It is the exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels...it comprises the mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences.

On behalf of the Global Water Partnership, Peter Rogers and Allan W. Hall (2003) elaborate this term as: “Governance covers the manner in which allocative and regulatory politics are exercised in the management of resources (natural, economic, and social) and broadly embraces the formal and informal institutions by which authority is exercised. 

John Kurien and A. K. Sinha (2007) provide different definitions in this context like: “The term governance deals with the processes and systems by which an organization or society operates. The World Bank defines governance as "the exercise of political authority and the use of institutional resources to manage society's problems and affairs". An alternative definition suggests that governance is "the use of institutions, structures of authority and even collaboration to allocate resources and coordinate or control activity in society or the economy". Thus, governance can be taken to be broadly synonymous with authority, decision making, power, administration, or politics. However, more specifically, we shall take governance to mean two broad things - Rules and Institutions / Agencies.”        

2. Water Governance?

According to the Global Water Partnership (2003): “ Water governance has been defined as the political, social, economic and administrative systems that are in place to develop and manage water resources and delivery of services at different levels of society.” Or, as described by Moench et al. (20030), water governance is the set of systems that control decision-making with regard to water resource development and management. Hence, water governance is much more about the way in which decisions are made (i.e. how, by whom, and under what conditions decisions are made) than the decisions themselves (Moench et al., 2003).  Further simplicity is provided in the second UN World Water Development Report by having a purpose-oriented definition of the water governance systems that “determine who gets what water, when and how, and decide who has the right to water and related services.”

3. Groundwater governance?

Héctor Garduño, Stephen Foster & Albert Tuinhof (2011) explain that “groundwater governance is focused on the exercise of appropriate authority and promotion of responsible collective action to ensure sustainable and efficient utilization of groundwater resources for the benefit of humankind and dependent ecosystems.”

 On behalf well-known international entities, a final draft of regional consultants (2012) about groundwater governance present the following definition:  “Groundwater governance is the process by which groundwater resources are managed through the application of responsibility, participation, information availability, transparency, custom, and rule of law. It is the art of coordinating administrative actions and decision making between and among different jurisdictional levels – one of which may be global.”

A brochure from the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Center, IGRAC, has further simplified this concept by stating that “groundwater governance is about decision-making on groundwater, involving individuals and/or organized entities at various levels. For instance, a farmer may decide to increase groundwater abstraction required for irrigation and a water authority department may decide to introduce land use restrictions for aquifer protection. Ground-water related decisions are taken in ‘action arenas’ structured by sets of nested, formal and informal rules, mechanisms and arrangements that are designed, agreed upon, applied and enforced on these various levels (www.un.igrac.org).

 Himanshu Kulkarni, ACWADAM, Pune, Email: acwadam@vsnl.net, also provides a broad defininition: “groundwater governance can be understood to have components such as augmentation (recharge), energy links, efficiency measures (micro irrigation), integration of rainwater harvesting-surface-groundwater and responses to groundwater quality deterioration.”

There is no one standard definition of groundwater governance. However, the given concepts about groundwater governance do point to formal and informal institutional arrangements in place for making decisions about groundwater management by designing, agreeing upon to apply and clarify rules, roles, rights and responsibilities of all stakeholders regarding say recharge and discharge/ sustainable yield, information about aquifer depth and groundwater quality, points for pump installation, filter zone in an aquifer, proper spacing, operational hours of tube-wells, energy links, selection of tools for efficient groundwater use like pressurized irrigation, integration of rainwater harvesting-surface-groundwater and collective responses to groundwater quality deterioration as mention by Kulkarni and other researchers.