Second, scientists and engineers calculate the "operational" yield—the amount of available groundwater through various methods that is capable of meeting management goals (Richardson et al. 2011; Pierce et al. 2011). The Water Framework Directive includes five key elements; watershed management based on watershed plans, a combined approach to pollution control linking emission limit values with environmental quality standards, definition of "good water status", the principle of full cost recovery for water and increased public participation in policy-making (Page and Kaika 2003).
Access and Allocation .1 Australia
Many parts of the EU have groundwater protection regimes, including the licensing of wells. In the western United States, groundwater access and allocation is governed by the operation of a prior allocation system.
Accountability .1 Australia
The USGS has identified 62 regionally extensive aquifers and is conducting assessments for about a third of them, but most aquifer assessment and monitoring is done by states and the quality of the programs is highly variable (GWPC2007). Australia, Europe and the western US face similar technical liability challenges due to deficiencies in groundwater measurement and monitoring infrastructure.
Adaptation .1 Australia
In practice, the main flexibility mechanism in the WFD is the degree of freedom given to member states to set groundwater standards and implementation schedules. Forest Service, but state water management agencies have a limited role and responsibility to manage the distribution of water for consumptive use or to control water to ensure consumptive supplies.
Agency .1 Australia
In the Netherlands, regional water boards and water boards have a strong role in the implementation of the WFD. More than thirty federal agencies, boards and commissions in the United States have water-related programs and responsibilities (Christian Smith et al. 2012).
Comparative Assessment of Groundwater Governance in Australia, the EU and the Western USA
The EU WFD has gone the furthest towards an integrated framework for the management of groundwater quantity and quality objectives and the human and environmental uses of groundwater. The pre-appropriation system in the western US provides clearly defined priorities for water allocation, but lacks flexibility during extreme droughts.
Some Groundwater Governance Difficulties and Dilemmas
Second, the limits of groundwater resources, their flows, and their interactions with surface water and the environment are often poorly understood. The impacts of groundwater use on other resources and the environment can be delayed by many years, decades or even centuries.
Conclusions
Biermann F et al (2009) People, Places and the Planet: Science and Implementation Plan for the Earth System Management Project. Hering D et al (2010) The European Water Framework Directive at age 10: a critical review of the findings with recommendations for the future.
Introduction
This chapter describes key aspects of the groundwater legal systems of these three regions and the ways in which they deal with key emerging challenges, both as a guide and a warning to areas facing similar issues. These groundwater quantity issues have been particularly dominant in the legal discourse of the western US and Australia, where water scarcity is common and competition for water is high.
Envisioning Groundwater in Law: Its Nature and Ownership
The Directive also refers to a "Body of groundwater", which is a distinct volume of groundwater within an aquifer or aquifers. This view has been seen as justifying the traditional English common law rule of absolute ownership of groundwater by overlying landowners, which was imported to both the USA and Australia (Klein2005; Gardner et al. 2009).
Controlling Groundwater Extraction
In any case, the human right to water is an evolving issue that each of the focus regions will likely need to address in the future. In contrast to protections for surface water rights, protections for (GDE) are at a very early stage of development in the western US.
Controlling Discharges of Pollution to Groundwater
In Australia, the federal government's role in groundwater quality is largely limited to recommending policy, undertaking joint planning with states and providing funding (Nelson2011a). In the EU, the compliance regime of the Groundwater Directive implies that values of groundwater quality standards (threshold values) may not be exceeded at any measurement point in groundwater bodies.
Conclusion
In: Ragione S (ed) The Global Importance of Groundwater in the 21st Century: In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Groundwater Sustainability, Alicante, 24-27 January 2006, National Groundwater Association, Westerville, pp. 317-329. Sophocleous M (2010) Review: Groundwater management practices, challenges and innovations in the High Plains aquifer, USA – lessons and recommended actions.
Introduction
Challenges Linked to Groundwater Management
National frameworks that attempt to specify smaller scale management details (eg spacing of wells, specific prices for water) will often enumerate actions that are inappropriate or unworkable at the local or even regional level. Therefore, management activities carried out on the smallest scale and at the lowest administrative level (at which they can be effectively carried out) are easier and most effective to undertake.
Integrated Water Management Framework .1 Water and Its Environment
This premise must be weighed against management decisions related to the large and interconnected nature of groundwater systems – connections that propagate local management activities to the larger system. In particular, basic human needs should be ensured (i.e. water supply for drinking and basic hygiene) and environmental protection should be given a full place in RBM.
Operational Management
They are based on the cooperation of water (land) users or polluters: the latter are not forced, but persuaded to do (or not do) something. Finally, an example of the coordinated model is illustrated by river basin commissions (eg the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River).
Planning
Analysis of the institutional framework of RBM and the identification of various operational decisions that can be taken, the bodies responsible for these decisions and their management capacity; In general, plans should be drawn up, taking into account the management capacity of countries and basins.
Analytical Support
A more advanced type of operational support is the combination of on-line monitoring with computer models in order to predict future system conditions. Tools to support integrated management and analyzes at the river basin level that describe not only the different aspects (quantity and quality) of the physical system, but also the interactions with the socio-economic system;.
Internationally Shared Aquifers
Analysis of costs and benefits must take into account recent developments in the estimation of unpriced values, especially environmental valuation;. Policy games are generally supported by computer-based tools that take into account physical and other aspects in the process;.
Public Participation
Such a procedure still falls short of the compliance regimes included in multilateral environmental agreements, as it does not provide a system of automatic peer review. However, it can provide a mechanism by which the normative content of the international groundwater management regime can be improved.
The EU Approach
Direct discharge of pollutants into groundwater is prohibited subject to a series of provisions listed in Article 11 of the WFD. It therefore represents a proportionate and scientifically based response to the requirements of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) as it relates to assessments on the chemical status of groundwater and the identification and reversal of significant and sustained upward trends in pollutant concentrations.
An Example from Michigan, USA: A State Level Approach
For a Zone A designation (ARI not likely; Figures 8.3 and 8.4), the user would simply register the proposed withdrawal with MDEQ and receive authorization to proceed. To determine Areas B and C (Potential ARI; Figures 8.3 and 8.4), the applicant may modify the proposal and retry the screening tool or request that MDEQ conduct a site-specific retreat analysis, with the expectation that the site-specific analysis will have less uncertainty. associated with withdrawal assessment, as a screening tool.
The Australian Approach
As part of the National Water Initiative, a National Water Commission was established through an Intergovernmental Agreement (Council of Australian Governments). NWQMS (1994) National strategy for water quality management, document 1: water quality management - an overview of the policy.
Introduction
This is where collective action comes into its own by involving water users as key participants in conjunctive management. Each national case study outlines the various policy and institutional contexts, considering the drivers and successes of conjunctive management and collective action.
Conjunctive Management: Experiences from Australia, Spain and the United States of America
In the United States, primary authority over the allocation of ground and surface water rests with the states. Or they can buy surface water rights and leave the associated water in the stream to cover the effects of groundwater pumping.
Discussion and Conclusion
Conjunctive management has enabled water users and the states to deal with various water-related crises and enables more active forms of water management. In the United States, conjunctive management policies also lagged in some areas, including the limited attention given to environmental issues by the legislature and others, and the lack of more active coordination of groundwater and surface water use.
Why Justice Matters in Water Governance
Challenges of Groundwater Governance
Groundwater allocation and sharing schemes are further complicated by scientific uncertainties (Chapter 28) – the limited capacity to quantify surface water – groundwater interactions; aquifer recharge rates; and responses of groundwater-dependent ecosystems to changes in groundwater quantity and quality. We need to be able to articulate what principles or values we draw on to ensure that the outcome of water sharing is considered fair or just.
Defining Justice
This Holy Grail—that there is a unifying theory of justice—has not yet materialized, and is unlikely to materialize in the foreseeable future (Wenz 1988). Provides an underlying rationale for resolving all issues of justice through the free market (and the courts).
Why Justice Should Be Considered in Groundwater Governance
Preferred nesting sites are fine sandy riverbanks in the middle and lower reaches of the Daly River. Most cities, as well as all agricultural developments in the region, are supported by groundwater supplies.
Synthesis
It is thus obvious that agricultural extraction has a significant impact on the area's ecological function. There have been many initiatives to address and protect the long-term viability of the resource.
Joining the Dots: Justice, Governance and Sustainability
This tension presents an opportunity for synergy between the two concepts—the strengths of one offset the weaknesses of the other. Agyeman suggests this revised rationale for sustainability: "The need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now and in the future, in a fair and equitable manner, living within the limits of supporting ecosystems" (2005b , p. 17).
Conclusion
Jackson S (2004) Preliminary report on indigenous perspectives on land use and water management in the Daly River region, Northern Territory. We show that social justice plays a very important role in the construction of the acceptability judgment, as already highlighted by a series of Australian studies.
Introduction
The aim is to dissect the factors that determine the acceptability of the different scenarios, with specific attention to the perception of their legitimacy, feasibility and social justice (see also Chapter 10). Social justice plays a very important role in the construction of the acceptability judgment, as highlighted by a series of Australian studies in the water sector (Syme and Nancarrow1997; Nancarrow et al.1998; Gross2011).
Groundwater Allocation Policies and Social Justice Principle
In practice, policy approaches implemented to manage over-allocated groundwater systems often rely on a combination of several of the justice principles listed above. Based on an analysis of grant policies implemented worldwide, we identify five archetypal policy approaches that we consider representative of the diversity of practices worldwide.
Case Study and Methodology .1 Context and Objective
The third phase consisted of a qualitative analysis of the participants' discourse and a quantitative analysis of their responses to the questionnaire. ❹The amount allocated per hectare is inversely proportional to the size of the farm: small farms receive a larger allocation per hectare.
Results: The Acceptability of Allocation Rules Scenarios .1 Sticking Points to the Approach
In order to uniquely assign the farmers one of the rationales, we based our assessment on their reasoning in relation to the scenarios, and carried out a qualitative (somewhat subjective) classification of the salient aspects of what they had to say (based on the material collected through interviews). , we were unable to clearly define the rationale for 5 of the 47 farmers). The scenarios are evaluated one by one in accordance with the benefits and threats it poses to the respondent's own interests. "I am one of the first farmers who developed irrigation in the region, I will speak in my own defense" (farmer 22). This reflects some situations reported in Australian studies: "the forces of self-interest among water users become prominent and public involvement becomes merely a game in which each stakeholder presents its interest in the most favorable light possible" (Syme et al. 1999).
Discussion and Conclusion
First, it is necessary to strengthen the cognitive and moral legitimacy of groundwater abstraction policy reform before involving stakeholders in a discussion of allocation rules. Water allocation is clearly seen by farmers as one of many policy tools that can be used to shape future agricultural developments.
Biophysical Aspects
