It's World Water Day (WWD) and the closing day of the Fifth World Water Forum.
In keeping with this year's theme of transboundary waters and at Daniel Collins' excellent suggestion, I am highlighting a transboundary water theme - in this case, transboundary ground water. View all the waterbloggers' synchroblogged transboundary posts.
Let me mention five important publications/events:
1) Here is the recently-released UNESCO-IHP publication of the draft articles of Transboundary Aquifers: Managing a Vital Resource prepared by the UNILC. It's no longer a draft; it was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2008.
2) UNESCO-IHP and IGRAC (Netherlands) formally unveiled the map of the world's 273 shared (transboundary) aquifers at 5WWF. This is a significant event. Why? It'll bring much-needed attention to the issue of TG GW and do for TB GW what the transboundary river basins map did for the TB SW issues. Policymakers and decisionmakers will be informed.
Oddly enough, I could not find obvious links to the aforementioned on the WWD site, especially item(2) [Note: Peter Letitre, Director of IGRAC, tells me that IGRAC will be providing a link to the map shortly, which I will post.]
3) Here is a link to the International Shared Aquifer Resources Management (ISARM) Programme.
4) A paper on the transboundary (Jordan - Saudi Arabia) Disi aquifer project by Eugenia Ferragina and Francesca Greco.
5) Yesterday I convened a side event at 5WWF that emphasized TB GW:
Download TB GW Side Event 21March2009_flyer
Here are pdfs of the presentations. I added a presentation I made in 2007 on North American TB GW that I did not give at 5WWF.
Download Changing Climes Changing Times - Aureli
Download Umatilla Basin - 5WWF - de Silva
Download Transboundary Groundwater in Mesoamerica - Cordoba
Download TB Aquifers and Global Change - Puri
Download Campana - Transnational GW - Summit2007
Enjoy!
As a final note, rest assured that the folks at 5WWF are now aware of ground water. More later!
"The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution." -- Bertrand Russell
Most surface water projects also *sell* recreation and fish and wildlife habitat to seal the deal. Groundwater, the orphan, cannot sell much in the way of recreation, except *hot springs*, and those go away soon after the wells are drilled!
Posted by: groundwaterhegemony | Thursday, 26 March 2009 at 07:32 PM
Thanks, Daniel.
I was remiss in mentioning that surface water supply projects often serve other purposes that ground water projects can't: power generation comes to mind, as do flood control, navigation, and recreation (in the developed world, at least).
We won't get into a discussion about the environmental impacts of such projects, or losses due to evaporation.
Posted by: Michael | Tuesday, 24 March 2009 at 10:57 AM
Another just occurred to me: the historical divisions among different types of water resource expert: civil engineer, ag engineer, soil scientist, geologist, meteorologist, physical geographer, planner, etc, etc.
Posted by: Daniel Collins | Monday, 23 March 2009 at 04:25 AM
I'd think another plays a role too: the slowness of response compared with surface waters.
I'm getting to SW-GW interactions now, so I will be giving increasing time to solutions to these perception and knowledge problems.
Posted by: Daniel Collins | Monday, 23 March 2009 at 04:20 AM
Hi, Daniel.
Thanks for commenting, and thanks for doing the 'synchroblogging' for WWD.
Excellent question. Some answers:
1) Out of sight, out of mind.
2) Hard/expensive to get data and monitor.
3) Many water managers and others in the water field don't understand ground water/aren't trained in ground water hydrology.
4) There is no 'big money' in ground water projects, so donors and the private sector aren't that interested.
5) You can show off a huge dam, canals, etc., and point to them as signs of 'progress'. Governments and donors love that. You drill 200 wells - not very impressive!
6) Ground water is the ultimate 'people's resource' - the so-called 'silent revolution' of Ramon Llamas. You drill a well at the point-of-use and don't need a gazillion-dollar dam [see (4) and (5)].
7) Many water projects are conceived/designed/built by engineers, who generally don't have much training in ground water.
I think the 'money angle' is a major reason. No big bucks.
I'll rest for now.
Posted by: Michael | Monday, 23 March 2009 at 03:32 AM
What do you think are the key factors holding back GW from being given the level of attention it deserves? Lack of data, lack of visuals (i.e. that TB GW map), sociopolitics, ...? Conjunctive use is not really being considered in my neck of the woods yet, and I think two of the above reasons are playing a part.
Posted by: Daniel Collins | Monday, 23 March 2009 at 02:57 AM