Dr. Eshwer Kale, Dr. Marcella D Souza, Hemant Pinjan, Arianna Tozzi
WOTR Centre f or Resilience Studies
www.wotr.org
The Context:
In semi-arid regions of India groundwater sustains the livelihood of rural communities, providing a flexible buffer and source of resilience at times of drought. The absence of strong community-level governance however limits communities’ ability to sustainably manage their water resources and exercise their rights to adequate quality and quantity of water to meet their needs.
Objective:
This paper highlights the lessons from an action research implemented under the ‘Water Stewardship Initiative’ (WSI) by the Watershed Organization Trust (WOTR) aimed enhancing to local capacities to manage resiliently groundwater under climate change, and a subsequent evaluation to understand shifts achieved by the interventions.
Research approach:
The research was piloted in 106 villages in two Indian states, Maharashtra and Telangana for 2 years. The intervention focused on the institution of a village level water management team and training of water stewards, providing technical guidance and community mobilization. Large data-set on socio-economic and biophysical-assets were collected before and after the study to understand enablers and barriers promoting groundwater governance and status of groundwater resource throughout the project. Qualitative data were gathered through stakeholder workshops and discussions in case study sites.
Results:
The initiative promoted behavioural and organizational change at the level of governance, practice and community action. It enabled knowledge co-production and cross-scale learning towards effective water management, changing users’ mindset regarding groundwater ownership from an individual property to its public and shared nature. Stakeholder engagement was achieved through open discussions, bringing together actors from science, policy makers and local community members to discuss water related issues and make long-term sustainable water management plans through participatory water-budgeting in their villages.
The WSI was found to introduce substantial shifts in the way groundwater was both perceived and managed at the local level, building strong local capacities towards building resilient groundwater use under climate change. As a result, villages achieved water security, reducing their dependency on administrations and politicians for sanctioning water-tankers at times of droughts. In contrast with top-down technically-driven approaches, the WSI advances a right and justice based understanding of resilience, distributing rights and entitlements to groundwater at the community level, while also giving the communities the full responsibility to manage water fairly.
Relevance to the conference theme:
The research fits well with the theme on Groundwater Governance. It brings to the fore learnings from drought-affected areas of India, highlighting the links between participatory groundwater governance and groundwater resilience to climate change, while also providing opportunities for cross-context learning and reflection.