-PDF Download- Strengthening Groundwater Governance In Pakistan EBOOK

Strengthening groundwater governance in Pakistan

Author: Rana, Abdul Wajid

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2024-02-27

Total Pages: 79

ISBN-13:

Pakistan is highly dependent on irrigated agriculture for employment, income generation and food security—around 90 percent of all food production relies on either surface or groundwater irrigation. The growing dependence of agriculture but also industries and the drinking water sector on groundwater has led to the overexploitation of groundwater resources and, in some areas, to the deterioration of groundwater quality. Fiscal incentives for solarization of irrigation/drinking water pumps are likely to further increase water withdrawals and make water governance more complex. To understand the perspectives of groundwater users, a qualitative study was conducted in the alluvial groundwater systems of Punjab as well as the hard rock systems of Balochistan. Interviews with key informants at federal, provincial, and district level were also conducted to capture insights from additional decisionmakers affecting groundwater management and governance. The study identified a series of challenges around groundwater management and use, including overexploitation of groundwater resources, worsening groundwater quality raising serious health challenges, lack of communities’ participation in decision making, particularly women, non-availability of actionable data, weak enforcement of laws and regulations relating to groundwater governance, and partisan decision-making driven by political influentials and local bureaucracies. Solarization of irrigation pumps without proper regulatory and monitoring framework is expected to exacerbate groundwater extraction and accelerate water stress. The study strongly suggests an urgent need for not only integrated water management at all levels with equitable distribution of water resources but also to engage local communities and other stakeholders, including women in water conservancy awareness campaigns, groundwater quality monitoring, and decision-making. Moreover, the management and governance of water, particularly groundwater, must be insulated from political and partisan decision making. It is equally important to look at the quality of groundwater from a wider prism, considering health and water supply, sanitation and hygiene to address the increase in water borne diseases.

Advances in Groundwater Governance

Author: Karen G. Villholth

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2017-12-14

Total Pages: 642

ISBN-13: 1351808400

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book addresses groundwater governance, a subject internationally recognized as crucial and topical for enhancing and safeguarding the benefits of groundwater and groundwater-dependent ecosystems to humanity, while ensuring water and food security under global change. The multiple and complex dimensions of groundwater governance are captured in 28 chapters, written by a team of leading experts from different parts of the world and with a variety of relevant professional backgrounds. The book aims to describe the state-of-the-art and latest developments regarding each of the themes addressed, paying attention to the wide variation of conditions observed around the globe. The book consists of four parts. The first part sets the stage by defining groundwater governance, exploring its emergence and evolution, framing it through a socio-ecological lens and describing groundwater policy and planning approaches. The second part discusses selected key aspects of groundwater governance. The third part zooms in on the increasingly important linkages between groundwater and other resources or sectors, and between local groundwater systems and phenomena or actions at the international or even global level. The fourth part, finally, presents a number of interesting case studies that illustrate contemporary practice in groundwater governance. In one volume, this highly accessible text not only familiarizes water professionals, decision-makers and local stakeholders with groundwater governance, but also provides them with ideas and inspiration for improving groundwater governance in their own environment.

Groundwater governance and the water-energy-food nexus in action: a global review of policy and practice

Author: Shah, T.

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2023-06-20

Total Pages: 56

ISBN-13: 9251371687

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The dominance of insular, supply-side technocratic thinking has posed a major challenge to improving water governance in the face of mounting resource scarcity, which has itself been accentuated by climate change. During the 1990s, global discourse moved from supply-driven sectoral interventions to more holistic approaches to water governance as part of larger socioeconomic and environmental processes. Integrated water resources management (IWRM) emphasized demand-side water management and used prices, participation, entitlements, laws and regulations to strengthen water governance at hydrological rather than territorial units. More recently, there have been pleas for more integrative approaches that link land, water, energy, food, livelihoods, the environment and other spheres – each with its own, often insular, governance structure. The evolution in global thinking reflects the need to meet growing human needs by innovating approaches that enhance resilience and the sustainability of landscapes, the biosphere and the Earth as a whole. To this end, the water–energy–food (WEF) nexus advocates that society is better off seeking system-level balance rather than maximizing sectoral objectives. The nexus approach has produced prolific analytical literature over the past decade but integrating it into policy and governance faces many challenges. This review paper explores these challenges by focusing on the WEF nexus in action. We compare the nexus in several water-stressed areas of the world including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, China, Bangladesh and Gujarat (India), with additional evidence drawn from other places such as Morocco and Punjab-Haryana. We synthesize these case studies to examine the actual state of play in different locations and tease out practical lessons for mainstreaming nexus thinking in water policy and governance. The key conclusion is that specific contexts, contingencies and constituencies drive national and sub-national policies. Directing the outcomes towards the optimal nexus depends on the nature of the state, investment in institution building and, above all, ingenuity in policy design and implementation to overcome resistance to change and strengthen political capital for the leaders who back such policies.

Groundwater Governance in the Indo-Gangetic and Yellow River Basins

Author: Aditi Mukherji

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2009-06-08

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 0203874471

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

One of the key features of agricultural development in the last five decades has been intensive groundwater use in the Indo-Gangetic Basin (Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh) and in the Yellow River Basin (China). Groundwater irrigates almost 60% of the net irrigated area in South Asia and 70% in the north China plains. Groundwater use for agri

Global Framework for Action to Achieve the Vision on Groundwater Governance

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2018-07-03

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13: 9251092583

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This Framework for Action has been prepared to achieve the goals of the Shared Global Vision for Groundwater Governance 2030. It describes the main steps to be taken and is an urgent call for action to all who can make a difference: national and local governments, international organizations, the private sector, civil society, media, educational institutes and professional organizations — but also to well owners, groundwater users and concerned citizens everywhere.

Water Resources of Pakistan

Author: Muhammad Arif Watto

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-03-25

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 3030656799

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book presents the first comprehensive assessment of water resources in Pakistan including surface water resources and groundwater resources. It gives a detailed overview of issues and challenges related to water which have not been adequately addressed e.g. water resource vulnerability to climate change, groundwater depletion and contamination, and water governance etc. It includes a collection and compilation of unpublished and scattered data from the archives and repositories of various national institutions and organization. Given the literature dearth, this book will not only be a comprehensive assessment of water resources in Pakistan but can also can as outstanding textbook on water resource management in Pakistan. It will attract a great range of readership including water specialists, researchers, undergraduate and post graduate students and policy makers from Pakistan as well as from overseas.

Taming the Anarchy

Author: Tushaar Shah

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-09-30

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1136524029

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In 1947, British India-the part of South Asia that is today's India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh-emerged from the colonial era with the world's largest centrally managed canal irrigation infrastructure. However, as vividly illustrated by Tushaar Shah, the orderly irrigation economy that saved millions of rural poor from droughts and famines is now a vast atomistic system of widely dispersed tube-wells that are drawing groundwater without permits or hindrances. Taming the Anarchy is about the development of this chaos and the prospects to bring it under control. It is about both the massive benefit that the irrigation economy has created and the ill-fare it threatens through depleted aquifers and pollution. Tushaar Shah brings exceptional insight into a socio-ecological phenomenon that has befuddled scientists and policymakers alike. In systematic fashion, he investigates the forces behind the transformation of South Asian irrigation and considers its social, economic, and ecological impacts. He considers what is unique to South Asia and what is in common with other developing regions. He argues that, without effective governance, the resulting groundwater stress threatens the sustenance of the agrarian system and therefore the well being of the nearly one and a half billion people who live in South Asia. Yet, finding solutions is a formidable challenge. The way forward in the short run, Shah suggests, lies in indirect, adaptive strategies that change the conduct of water users. From antiquity until the 1960‘s, agricultural water management in South Asia was predominantly the affair of village communities and/or the state. Today, the region depends on irrigation from some 25 million individually owned groundwater wells. Tushaar Shah provides a fascinating economic, political, and cultural history of the development and use of technology that is also a history of a society in transition. His book provides powerful ideas and lessons for researchers, historians, and policy

Groundwater Markets in Pakistan

Author: Ruth Suseela Meinzen-Dick

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 1996-01-01

Total Pages: 88

ISBN-13: 0896291081

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Energy-irrigation nexus in South Asia: Improving groundwater conservation and power sector viability

Author: Shah, T., Scott, C., Kishore, A., Sharma, A.

Publisher: IWMI

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13: 9290905883

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In the highly populated South Asian region, where pump irrigation has gained predominance over gravity-flow irrigation in recent decades, the fortunes of groundwater and energy economies are closely tied. Little can be done in the groundwater economy that will not affect the energy economy, and the struggle to make the energy economy viable is frustrated by the often violent opposition from the farming community to the rationalization of energy prices. As a result, the region's groundwater economy has boomed at the expense of the development of the energy economy. This report suggests that this does not have to be so; and the first step to evolving approaches to sustaining a prosperous groundwater economy with a viable power sector is for the decision makers in the two sectors to talk to each other, and jointly explore better options for energy-groundwater co-management which, the authors suggest, have so far been overlooked.

Evaluation of FAO’s contribution to Sustainable Development Goal 6 – “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”

Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2023-03-08

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 9251376425

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This evaluation assessed the extent to which FAO’s work has been relevant and effective in supporting its Members to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6). Water resources management is central to any consideration of agricultural production, ecosystems sustainability, rural livelihoods and climate change adaptation and resilience, issues that lie at the heart of FAO’s mandate. The evaluation found that FAO has a comparative advantage in several key SDG 6 target areas and addressed needs and demands from Members in all SDG 6 target areas. Irrigated agriculture (target 6.4) represents an area of high demand from Members and a dominant theme in the reviewed case studies. Regional initiatives are effective in addressing specific needs and challenges of individual regions. FAO has performed well in its custodial role for SDG indicators 6.4.1 and 6.4.2. However, overall FAO’s strategic approach to water-related activities remains. The links between agriculture and water quality and pollution (target 6.3) were not adequately addressed. Despite limited evidence on full transformational changes, the evaluation highlights several activities and approaches that, if nurtured, could form the basis for transformational change.