What do different groups of water users prioritise when it comes to groundwater development? How do their priorities diverge and overlap? These complex questions about the development of groundwater are addressed in a new publication from our project ‘Groundwater Futures in Sub-Saharan Africa’ (GroFutures). This project gave us the chance to work with various groups of water users and policy actors in river basins in Niger, Tanzania and Ethiopia to envision different ways that groundwater could be used in the future and, find out what these groups of people thought about each suggested ‘pathway’ of development.
Each ‘pathway’ suggested a direction of future change and development, such as intensified irrigated agriculture, with defined technological, social, economic and environmental characteristics. These investigations are important because reliance on groundwater in Sub-Saharan Africa is growing and expected to rise as surface water resources become more unpredictable due to the impacts of the climate crisis. Below we highlight some key learnings from our research.
Groundwater is becoming more important across Africa
Recent research has also suggested that some aquifers may recharge rapidly under torrential rainfall, making them potentially an increasingly important resource, including for irrigated agriculture. But major questions remain about how groundwater will be used – what proportion should be allocated to domestic use, industry, hydropower and irrigation? How can access be equitable for different social groups? It is also important to consider the sustainability of aquifers, in terms of the quantity and the quality of the water – this is particularly difficult to judge in the many areas where there are insufficient hydrogeological data.
Our project posed six stylised ways of using groundwater, imagining various abstraction volumes and functions for its use. We then modelled the impact of abstraction in each pathway on local aquifers. In workshops, we invited local stakeholders to look at these results, and use them to assess each pathway, using Multicriteria Mapping (MCM) software developed at the University of Sussex. Participants used various criteria to rank the pathways, such as how affordable they were, and how closely they were aligned with national policies and strategies. They then used the visual tools in the MCM software to consider and discuss each other’s perspectives.
Convergence and divergence in stakeholder opinions
We found some convergences in the opinions of the different groups, both in terms of the pathways they favoured and what they thought were important considerations to bear in mind when making their assessments. Water availability and environmental sustainability, including water quality, were central concerns across the groups. Most participants recognised that all groundwater uses potentially impinge upon one another, affecting both the quantity and quality of abstracted water. Overall, all groups of participants preferred pathways of low-intensity use, which incorporated multiple agricultural, pastoral and domestic purposes, rather than choosing high-intensity single-use pathways, for example irrigation. They explained that it was unrealistic to prioritise one water use over another, as the interrelation of different water functions was complex.
However, there were some important areas of divergence. For instance, when it came to the level at which water should be managed, most community-level water users preferred community or municipal-level management regimes, because they felt that water quality was more likely to be safeguarded by institutions at these levels. In contrast, most policy and development actors preferred individual-level management, which they considered to be more efficient in terms of operation and maintenance.
Future work combining modelling and multicriteria mapping
Across participant groups, there was an appetite for more precise groundwater modelling, which could consider multiple abstraction rates across a basin and could be based on real abstraction points. We found that combining such modelling with MCM provided a good tool for understanding various stakeholders’ perspectives on groundwater development. Due to its visual nature, MCM is also a useful tool for provoking discussion between different actor groups.
This can show the way to more equitable, inclusive decision-making and governance when the stakeholder groups include policy actors and water managers. In a new project, starting in 2023, we will carry out more work of this nature, where we combine hydrogeological and climate modelling with water-user assessments and ‘living labs’ in multiple basins in Africa and India. The aim is to understand how to sustainably and equitably reconcile the water needs and priorities of various groups in the context of land use and climatic change.
GroFutures was part of the UK Natural Environment Research Council – Economic & Social Research Council – Department for International Development ‘Unlocking the Potential of Groundwater for the Poor’ (UPGro) programme.
