Crafting Combinations to Govern Groundwater: Knowledge, Motivation, and Agency

Introduction

Groundwater is a vital common pool resource that forms 99% of Earth’s liquid freshwater. It supplies nearly half the water for domestic use, one quarter of irrigation water, and one third of industrial water supply globally (Global Groundwater Statement, 2019; United Nations, 2022). Groundwater can provide a valuable reserve to buffer against variable rainfall, drought, and climate change.

Governing this critical common pool resource is complex, multi-faceted, and engages important opportunities and challenges (IGRAC, 2018; Villholth et al., 2018; Zwarteveen et al., 2021) that arise from the “interaction of groundwater users with the resource and between users, communities, and the state”(Closas & Villholth, 2020, p. 5). Taking water from an aquifer reduces groundwater available to others. Groundwater users typically extract water from myriads of private wells dispersed across rural landscapes. Groundwater is mobile, invisible, varies in renewability, and may move slowly through complex pathways (Schlager et al., 1994). The impacts of intensified resource use may be delayed, diffuse, and debatable. Interdependence between groundwater users is often hard to see and understand, making coordinated action difficult to organize.

Millions of rural households rely on tubewells (boreholes) and mechanized pumps to grow more food and earn more income, part of a global “silent revolution” in groundwater use (M. R. Llamas & Martínez-Santos, 2005). The political economy of irrigated agriculture includes many farmers who benefit from private wells. Africa arguably offers huge potential for growth in groundwater irrigation (Cobbing & Hiller, 2019; Pavelic et al., 2013). However, intensive groundwater extraction, such as in parts of South Asia, north China Plain, western United States, Arabian peninsula, and other areas, has also lowered water tables; raising pumping costs and reducing flows or drying up water in shallow wells, springs, streams, rivers, and wetland ecosystems (Petit et al., 2021). This benefits some and excludes and harms others, often those who are unable to invest in deeper wells, and those unable to defend their access to groundwater, creating “landscapes of dispossession” (Walsh, 2022). Intensive pumping has caused land subsidence and problems with salinity, arsenic, and fluoride. Groundwater risks contamination from untreated wastewater, toxic wastes, and non-point pollution from agricultural chemicals, such as nitrates. It is not only groundwater depletion or contamination that calls for action: responding to waterlogging and salinity or determining how to increase groundwater use in an equitable manner are also important.

Coping with these issues poses challenges for collective action in governing groundwater as a commons, a shared resource for which groundwater users, government agencies such as groundwater boards, and others take part in making and applying institutional “rules of the game”. Although many tools may be used in efforts to govern groundwater, examples of success, such as halting or reversing aquifer depletion, are rare, and context-dependent (Kemper, 2007; Molle & Closas, 2016; Theesfeld, 2010). As noted by Closas and Villholth (2020, p. 7): “the question is, how can approaches be developed that respond to the typical pitfalls of mainstream managerial-focused approaches and support solutions to achieve sustainable, socially accepted, resilient and equitable groundwater use?”

This special issue of the International Journal of the Commons presents a set of articles on groundwater governance, at multiple scales, from Africa, South Asia and elsewhere. This introductory editorial first offers a framework for considering improvements to groundwater governance in terms of the knowledge, motivation and agency of key actors. The following sections discuss combinations of instruments for governing groundwater, synergies from combining approaches, articles and topics in the special issue, and conclusions. An appendix further analyzes contexts for customizing groundwater governance, including aquifers, political economy, favorable conditions, nexus governance, and scale.

Knowledge, motivation, and agency

Groundwater governance involves coordination among many different actors. Key stakeholders include direct water users and formal organizations involved in regulating groundwater use and recharge, such as user associations and water boards. A variety of government departments, politicians, and private sector actors may take part in groundwater governance, with the number and complexity increasing from local to transboundary aquifers (Theesfeld, 2010). Not only is coordination a challenge with so many actors, but actions that could lead to more environmentally sustainable, economically productive, or socially equitable management of groundwater usually require coping with conflicting views and interests.

Compared to other common pool resources, the invisibility of groundwater makes understanding difficult, so knowledge becomes one key to change. Intensive groundwater extraction creates new gains and new harms and a need to deal with diverse and conflicting motivations. Groundwater uses, users, and impacts are typically dispersed across landscapes among people who have not previously had to cooperate in relation to groundwater. Thus, institutions for governing groundwater are often absent or inadequate, meaning there is need to strengthen agency, capabilities for coordinated action to share benefits, sustain use, and avoid or mitigate harm.

While no single tool or approach is sufficient, we suggest it is useful to think of how key actors can use combinations of tools and approaches to improve their knowledge, motivation, and agency to solve groundwater problems, as described below and illustrated in Figure 1. The framework discussed below is based on an iterative process of engagement with the literature on governance of groundwater and other natural resources, the case studies in this special issue, and practical efforts to strengthen groundwater governance in India (Sanil et al., 2024, this issue). The framework also draws on ideas from a framework about stewardship and sustainability (Enqvist et al., 2018), and the “head, heart, hands” framework (Sipos et al., 2008) but involves a somewhat different conceptualization developed here specifically in relation to groundwater governance. It parallels Rodella et al.’s (2023) framework of information, incentives, and investments for groundwater, though each component of our framework is somewhat broader.

Figure 1

To identify critical gaps and the combinations of tools and approaches that are more likely to succeed, it is useful to think about what would help actors to have the knowledge, motivation, and agency to work—individually and collectively—toward their desired objectives. These three concepts are not exclusive categories; individual tools may contribute to more than one. This knowledge, motivation, and agency (KMA) framework is offered as a possible basis for discussion, analysis, and action, a flexible “boundary object” that may facilitate communication and learning across diverse stakeholder perspectives, scientific disciplines, and contexts (Enqvist et al., 2018). We begin by explaining this framework, then provide examples of how it applies to empirical cases.

Knowledge, defined as “the ability to use information strategically to achieve one’s objectives” (Logan, 2012) plays a crucial role in groundwater governance. Relationships between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom can be analyzed in terms of a hierarchy or pyramid, for groundwater and more generally (van der Gun, 2017, pp. 194–195; Wikipedia, 2024). Many technical groundwater-related tools collect data or process it through various models to create information, and disseminate it to enhance knowledge (Logan, 2012).

New information and shared learning may change mental models—the way actors understand their situation with regard to groundwater resources, and with regard to other actors. Understanding can come from a variety of different knowledge systems, including local knowledge, experiential knowledge, social learning, and scientific hydrogeology (Cleaver et al., 2023; Enqvist et al., 2018). Because of the invisible, fugitive nature of groundwater, users, regulators, and even hydrogeologists often do not have sufficient information to understand the stocks and flows of the resource, or how one person’s use affects availability for others in the short or long term. It can seem easy and attractive to apply ideas of “sustainable yield” to groundwater. However, actually defining, assessing, and trying to manage for “groundwater sustainability” turns out to be quite complex, with much room for different interpretations and narratives (stories), as well as for conflicting views and interests (Foster & Chilton, 2020; Mace, 2022; Molle, 2023). Strengthening knowledge of groundwater is important, but complete information is not necessary to act; adaptive management allows learning by doing while monitoring and adjusting based on outcomes (Berkes, 2009; Fabricius & Currie, 2015).

Knowledge alone is not enough; whether and how people translate knowledge into action also depends on motivation, which may be shaped by a variety of values. Motivations vary in the extent to which they are externally-controlled or internal and autonomous; controlled by outside rewards and punishments or based on internalized values and worldviews, and the intrinsic motivations of inherently satisfying activities (Ryan & Deci, 2020; Pelletier & Rocchi, 2023). Commonly discussed policy tools that affect motivations to increase (or decrease) groundwater extraction or recharge typically focus on incentives through regulation and economic instruments such as subsidies (Rodella et al., 2023).

Regulation includes statutory regulations as well as customary laws and norms. Empirical research around the world indicates that conventional regulatory tools such as licensing (permits), metering, and quotas are often ineffective in the face of technical challenges as well as political and economic interests of powerful actors that affect the political feasibility of enforcing rules (Molle et al., 2018). Even governments that have substantial technical and administrative capacity to implement policies in other domains may have limited effectiveness in governing groundwater, as illustrated by examples such as the North China plain, Morocco, Spain, and the western United States (Molle & Closas, 2016; Kinzelbach et al., 2022; Mayaux, 2021; Kroepsch, 2024).

Economic instruments include direct fees and fines for water use as well as energy or resource pricing, subsidies, compensation for not growing irrigated crops or payments to not extract water, opportunities to sell solar power to the grid, and payments for environmental services. Financial incentives such as fees, taxes, or energy pricing may affect water use, but can be politically difficult or impossible to apply, while subsidies may be hard to control, inefficient, and sometimes counterproductive (Grafton et al., 2018; Shah, 2009). Overemphasis on economic motives can be self-defeating if it “crowds out” internal motivations, although in some cases external motivations may also complement or “crowd in” internalized and intrinsic motivations (Frey & Jegeni, 2002; Ostrom, 2000; Agrawal et al., 2015).

Internalized motivations, influenced by norms, values, and identity, can be crucial and sometimes more important, especially for sustained changes in behavior. In this issue, Zwarteveen et al. (2024) point out that care, including caring about others and about the environment, can provide a strong motivation for local communities’ groundwater governance. Looking at feelings and practices of care may also open up insights about the agency people are already exercising concerning groundwater. Coping with novel groundwater problems involving dispersed users may require expanding care to wider sets of people and concern for longer term threats. Shared understanding and identity may provide crucial motivations to care for aquifers serving broader territories, as in the recommendations summarized in Petit et al. (2021). Recognizing caring behaviors can be a starting point to support and amplify positive behaviors, as part of providing an “autonomy-supportive environment” (DeCaro & Stokes, 2008). Motivations may also derive from concern for one’s reputation, or longer-term (“enlightened”) self-interest., e.g. keeping an aquifer productive. While intrinsic or well-internalized extrinsic motivations may be harder to stimulate, especially by outsiders, articles in this issue illustrate experiential learning approaches such as use of participatory video (Hamamouche et al., 2024) and games with debriefing (Ahn et al., 2024; ElDidi et al., 2024; Sanil et al., 2024) that can help shape norms, as well as internalized and intrinsic motivations (see also Falk et al., 2023).

It is also important to consider the motivations of others besides groundwater users. An apparent lack of government “political will” or “capacity” to implement and enforce groundwater regulations may reflect political dynamics of competing incentives and priorities; such contestation cannot necessarily be remedied simply through policy declarations, education, training, or programs for “capacity development” (Mayaux, 2021). Government officials may have internal motivations such as those based on professional identity and pride or a desire to solve problems and provide services, as well as concerns about gains or losses related to careers, power, and personal benefits. So, there are likely to be mixtures of motivations, including conflicting interests.

The presence of motivation alone is not enough to ensure that people will work together effectively. Even if actors have knowledge of their groundwater conditions and motivation to address existing or emerging problems, it will not result in effective changes in groundwater governance unless they have the capability to act, or agency. Put another way, if someone understands the groundwater conditions and is motivated to act about it, is there something that they can usefully do to make a difference?

Agency here means being able to act to produce desired outcomes, particularly feasible opportunities for coordinated action to improve groundwater governance. In this editorial, we use the term “agency” in the social science meaning of purposive action (Cleaver, 2007). We refer to governmental bodies, such as departments or regulatory boards, as organizations, and refer to laws and regulations as institutions, in the sense of “rules of the game” (North, 1990).

Enqvist et al. (2018) note that agency includes action to shape biophysical and social conditions that influence the conduct of others. Because groundwater is a shared resource, coordination across individual actors is generally required for governance, at local or larger scales. For example, this coordination may be through informal or formal collective action to recharge the aquifer or regulate withdrawals. Communities may also exercise agency by protesting or requesting government assistance. Agency may be exercised by government actors in infrastructure investments or setting policies (to influence the behavior of others), or by private sector actors such as well drillers. And the agency of some actors may be constrained by structural conditions and the power of others (Cleaver, 2007). Examining differences in the beliefs, knowledge, motivations of different stakeholders can be crucial to achieving collective agency (Sabatier et al., 2005). Multistakeholder processes might be able to facilitate coordination across types of actors in some cases, but do not always lead to cooperation.

This framework of knowledge, motivation, and agency offers a basis for discussion that those involved in governing groundwater, including analysts or practitioners working with them, can consider and discuss in different contexts to think through who needs to come together to address groundwater problems. A first (and iterative) step would be to identify who are the key actors who affect groundwater and their sources of power, including not just formal authority (power over) but also their autonomous capabilities (power to) and potential gains from cooperation (power with) (Pansardi & Bindi, 2021). This might start with those who are most directly involved in groundwater management: making withdrawals, and influencing recharge, then thinking through what organizations (e.g. local associations, government departments, NGOs, or private sector actors) influence those directly managing groundwater. For each of the key actors and for acting together, what actions would contribute to better groundwater governance? Then do those actors have the knowledge to act in that way? What are their current motivations and what might motivate them to act differently? In particular, what would facilitate working jointly with others? If they were motivated to act, do they have the instruments, capacity, authority, resources, and other conditions to make desired changes? Not all forms of agency are necessarily effective in achieving sustainable or equitable management of groundwater.

Box 1 provides examples of tools to support knowledge, motivation, and agency. Note that the same tool can support more than one category. For example, experiential games and debriefing can strengthen knowledge as well as motivation; crop water budgeting tools can support knowledge and agency. In practice, types of instruments for groundwater governance may overlap or take hybrid forms, so a classification is more a convenient grouping rather than a matter of exclusive categories (Theesfeld, 2010). What is important is not the categories, but what they provide to key actors, and how they can be combined effectively.

Combinations

The influence of knowledge, motivation, agency, and institutional tools for groundwater governance can be illustrated through examples of different combinations of tools, as shown in Table 1. In the past, many communities have relied on local knowledge and regulated shallow wells and springs with customary rules, such as well spacing and protection zones (Van Steenbergen & Shah, 2003). Community solidarity and dependence on the water for local livelihoods provided motivation. However, such pre-existing institutions have usually been inadequate to cope with conditions created when economic incentives prompt people to use mechanized pumps to intensively extract large volumes of water from tubewells and groundwater levels decline, as illustrated by Hamamouche et al. (2024) in this issue.

Conventional regulatory approaches, which typically envision relying on water meters for information and well licensing and volumetric quotas to restrict extraction, have often been ineffective (Molle & Closas, 2016). In Western and Peninsular India, state governments have supported groundwater recharge though watershed conservation and rehabilitation of small ponds (tanks). Gujarat and some other states used a strategy of separating agricultural and non-agricultural electricity supplies, and, in pilot projects, allowing farmers to sell solar energy to the electricity grid instead of only using it for pumping (Shah et al., 2018).

The Andhra Pradesh Farmer-Managed Groundwater Systems Project (APFAMS) pursued an approach which relied primarily on informational instruments and voluntary local coordination (Venkata et al., 2013). This included participatory monitoring of wells and rainfall, participatory mapping of groundwater recharge and discharge areas, and public discussions about matching crop water demands with recharge. During the project these seemed to influence farmer decisions, such as crop choices. However, formal organized activities were not sustained after the project (Verma et al., 2012). Assessment of this case suggests that better information and voluntary agreements on their own may have impacts in some cases, at least for a while, but in this case were insufficient to result in lasting changes in formal institutions for agency (Reddy et al., 2021).

Building on ideas from APFAMS, the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) in India added groundwater “games” that simulate key aspects of a governance situation (Falk et al., 2023). Along with community debriefing, these games strengthen knowledge of the resource as well as motivation to reduce water use to avoid harming others and one’s own future, and facilitate discussion about potential action (agency). As Sanil et al. (2024) explain in this issue, these were combined with participatory mapping and monitoring of the resource plus geographic information systems to improve knowledge, and collective agency through crop-water budgeting, rainwater harvesting, and community rules about groundwater (FES et al., 2021; Meinzen-Dick et al., 2018). The importance of these additional tools to enable action is illustrated by the contrast between the India case and the application of the games in Ethiopia, as described by ElDidi et al. (2024) in this issue. There, farmers gained knowledge about groundwater and motivation to limit its use, and even adopted rules within the game to restrict water-consumptive crops, but without crop water budgeting or other support they did not know what crops could be grown sustainably.

Experience from pilot projects and larger-scale implementation may be synthesized into a package of policy recommendations. For the North China Plain, a major region of groundwater decline, Kinzelbach et al. (2022) propose a package including approximate water measurement with electricity meters (information to create knowledge), irrigation quotas and compensating farmers for not irrigating to create motivation, and replacing groundwater with imported surface water as an action mechanism, along with changing crops and reducing water extractions.

These examples of toolboxes for groundwater governance illustrate some of the many possible ways those engaged in governing groundwater can combine tools. The policy design literature (Howlett, 2019) talks about “mixes” of policy instruments (also called portfolios, packages, bundles, and similar terms). A key finding from research is that new policies and institutions are typically “layered” on top of existing ones, rather than replacing them (Howlett, 2019; Mayaux, 2021; Streek & Thelen, 2005). The potential for coherence, conflict, or gaps between different policy instruments creates opportunities and poses challenges in crafting institutions to improve groundwater governance (Howlett, 2019). The appendix to this editorial further discusses contexts that affect groundwater governance and customizing appropriate combinations of tools.

Synergies

Our assessment of the research on groundwater governance, including articles in this special issue, highlights the potential for synergies, combinations of approaches and tools, as shown in Table 2, that may offer useful starting points or options to consider and which may contribute to achieving shared gains for food, water, energy, and ecosystems. These suggest considering “both/and” solutions (Uphoff, 1991) rather than either/or choices such as only top-down or only bottom up, only local knowledge or only external scientific expertise. These synergies are combinations though which those working together to govern groundwater can become more effective by drawing on multiple forms of knowledge, motivation, and agency.

Articles

The articles in this special issue touch on many themes. Table 3 arranges the articles roughly in terms of the scale of governance, and identifies some common topics, including different kinds of tools discussed by articles, concerns with information and knowledge, motivation including forms of care, and mechanisms for agency.

The articles cover a range of scales from small groups playing experiential games to communities, nations, and transboundary water governance. As the smallest scale, groups of four or five people playing experiential games simulating groundwater decisions provide a microcosm for learning about factors that influence groundwater governance (Ahn et al., 2024) and how games can function as an intervention tool (ElDidi et al., 2024). Groundwater games can also be combined with other tools in working with local communities and their networks across wider landscapes (Sanil et al., 2024). The examples of caring for groundwater described by Zwarteveen et al. (2024) mostly focus on innovation in groundwater use and governance at a local level of communities (e.g. hundreds or thousands of people), as does Hamamouche et al.’s (2024) study of transmission of knowledge between generations. Vora’s (2024) discussion of causal loop system diagrams describe activities on the larger scale of building leadership capacity for a river basin. The article on Uzbekistan (Schmidt et al., 2024) focuses on national organizations and issues of information and groundwater governance in the regional context of Central Asia, with insights from some local examples. The Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (Mukuyu et al., 2024) illustrates the development of international institutional arrangements to coordinate governance of transboundary aquifers.

The articles discuss a variety of tools for groundwater governance, including experiential games, participatory videos, systems thinking, data sharing, government regulation, and international agreements. Three articles report on the use of groundwater games as tools for intervention and research, showing how groundwater games can contribute to knowledge and motivation, and relate to other tools for groundwater governance (Ahn et al., 2024; ElDidi et al., 2024; Sanil et al., 2024).

The articles illustrate various types of knowledge about groundwater, deriving from many sources of information, including official data collection and analysis, participatory processes, and indigenous and local knowledge. Studying how people care about and practice care for groundwater offers new perspectives on evidence and means for improving groundwater governance, as discussed by Zwarteveen et al. (2021), illustrated in Hamamouche et al. (2024), and in examples given by De Bont and Börjeson (2024). While Mukuyu et al. (2024) highlight the importance of information sharing for transboundary agreements in the Zambezi, this does not always happen: Schmidt et al. (2024) show how difficult it is to get different agencies and countries to share data in the Aral Sea basin. Though bringing together different forms of knowledge can advance groundwater governance (e.g., Hamamouche et al., 2024), divergence between different types of knowledge can create uncertainty that impedes action (Ahn et al., 2024; Schmidt et al., 2024).

This set of papers explores a wide range of factors affecting motivations. This includes regulations in Central Asia (Schmidt et al., 2024) and financial incentives in lab experiments (Ahn et al., 2024), but also local rules and norms of fairness or equity (De Bont & Börjeson, 2024; ElDidi et al., 2024), identity (Hamamouche et al., 2024), care (Zwarteveen et al., 2024), stewardship (Mukuyu et al., 2024), and long-term perspectives on local livelihoods (Hamamouche et al., 2024; Sanil et al., 2024). Many of the articles show the plurality of motivations among key actors, within communities, and even within individuals.

The papers show numerous ways in which those involved in governing groundwater have capabilities to pursue and achieve goals, forms of “agency”. This occurs within the microcosm of groundwater games and subsequent action by communities, through practices of care to conserve or enhance groundwater, and the potential for cooperating to share information and coordinate groundwater management (Schmidt et al., 2024), and establish formal institutions for governing transboundary aquifers (Mukuyu et al., 2024).

Conclusions

While there is a wealth of technical and institutional tools apparently available for groundwater governance, there is a dearth of success in preventing, halting, or reversing aquifer depletion; preventing or remedying groundwater quality problems; equitably sharing aquifer recharge; or managing groundwater irrigation together with ecosystems. In many contexts, conventional tools such as licensing wells, metering withdrawals, and setting quotas to limit use of irrigation water are hard to apply, ineffective, or even counterproductive, generating resistance rather than compliance. We suggest that rather than focusing on individual tools, it is more effective to start with the key actors, and consider what combinations of tools can strengthen their knowledge, motivation, and agency. While the KMA framework may have broader applicability beyond groundwater, it is particularly relevant here because of the invisibility of the resource, the dispersed nature of the users with conflicting interests and who may lack care for each other, and novel dilemmas for which existing institutions for agency are inadequate.

The papers in this special issue provide examples of approaches that have made a difference in particular contexts, at scales ranging from a small group in the lab to transnational aquifers. But these examples are not panaceas, and cannot be transplanted from one context to another without careful consideration of the conditions that influence how tools function, including aquifers, technologies, farming systems and agricultural markets, existing forms of water tenure, and current political and economic structures, including the distribution of power in its various forms. Typically, changes in groundwater governance layer new institutional tools onto existing institutions that already govern relationships between humans and water. Efforts to improve groundwater governance can therefore gain by starting with assessing what is already there: existing institutions, knowledge, and motivations of key actors, then looking for approaches to strengthen these where there are gaps. Rather than either/or approaches, we suggest that there can be synergies between different types of knowledge, values, and institutions, and participatory approaches to co-management by communities and governments. Choices in combining and crafting institutions involve not just information and motivation but also depend on agency and the politics of deciding what kind of futures to pursue and how to do so, who has a say in making those decisions, and constructing mutual understanding and agreement to enact and practice feasible changes.

Areas we think deserve particular attention for future research and action include a) improving larger scale groundwater governance in ways that recognize diversity in aquifers and social conditions and support autonomy and social learning, b) inclusive decision processes that compatibly combine (crowd in) intrinsic and internalized motivations together with external rewards and sanctions, and c) more thoroughly considering equity and sustainability in responding to the opportunities created by aquifer recharge, solar-energy for pumping, and the nearby and downstream impacts of intensive groundwater extraction on other water users, including ecosystems.

Research can contribute in myriad ways. Hydrogeological research can contribute to knowledge of aquifers, while sociohydrology can guide the combination of different types of knowledge in transdisciplinary work. Social science research can help identify factors influencing motivations for groundwater governance and the processes such as motivational crowding and internalization through which multiple motivations interact. Research can also empirically assess the effects of regulation and financial incentives. Attention to practices and feelings of care can expand ways of understanding and acting in relations between humans and groundwater. Both technical and social science research can propose and test mechanisms (such as crop water budgeting tools) to strengthen agency—such as the ability of individuals or groups to influence groundwater quantity or quality through supply or demand management, including how this is shaped by political economy and multiple forms of power.

The knowledge, motivation, and agency framework is not a rigid concept, but a way of going beyond individual tools to a more systemic, actor-focused approach. Consideration of what kinds of information will create shared knowledge; what kinds of internal and external motivations different actors have, and what types of agency they have that affects groundwater provides a starting point for building combinations of approaches to groundwater governance. Tools and approaches such as those described in this special issue or other resources can then be combined or co-developed, using an adaptive management approach to address critical groundwater problems.

Additional File

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Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.