Groundwater is humanity’s most vital supply of freshwater. Freshwater resources contained in aquifer systems globally are two orders of magnitude greater than those found in all rivers, lakes, and other surface freshwaters combined. Moreover, approximately one half of the world’s population today is dependent on groundwater for its basic needs. While these truisms are widely acknowledged, an additional reality is now recognized – many of these subsurface freshwater reservoirs are actually transboundary formations shared amongst two or more nations. In fact, around 600 transboundary aquifers have been identified worldwide. They underlie the territory of nearly every non-island nation and are found in both humid and arid environments. Surprisingly, though, only a handful of transboundary aquifers worldwide are subject to any type of formal or informal international agreement. Transboundary groundwater resources are now receiving growing attention among the international community. Questions are being raised about how they should be managed, allocated and protected, what rights aquifer riparians can enjoy, and what responsibilities these aquifer states might owe to neighbouring aquifer riparians. This book considers all these various aspects of the management and regulation of transboundary groundwater resources. It also presents case studies and explores recent efforts to engage the international community on best practices and global standards for governing transboundary aquifers. As communities and nations continue to expand their reliance on these critical sources of freshwater, they will have to address such issues and develop governance regimes for these shared subsurface resources. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Water International.

Groundwater is humanity's most vital supply of freshwater. Freshwater resources contained in aquifer systems globally are two orders of magnitude greater than those found in all rivers, lakes, and other surface freshwaters combined. Moreover, approximately one half of the world's population today is dependent on groundwater for its basic needs. While these truisms are widely acknowledged, an additional reality is now recognized - many of these subsurface freshwater reservoirs are actually transboundary formations shared amongst two or more nations. In fact, around 600 transboundary aquifers have been identified worldwide. They underlie the territory of nearly every non-island nation and are found in both humid and arid environments. Surprisingly, though, only a handful of transboundary aquifers worldwide are subject to any type of formal or informal international agreement. Transboundary groundwater resources are now receiving growing attention among the international community. Questions are being raised about how they should be managed, allocated and protected, what rights aquifer riparians can enjoy, and what responsibilities these aquifer states might owe to neighbouring aquifer riparians. This book considers all these various aspects of the management and regulation of transboundary groundwater resources. It also presents case studies and explores recent efforts to engage the international community on best practices and global standards for governing transboundary aquifers. As communities and nations continue to expand their reliance on these critical sources of freshwater, they will have to address such issues and develop governance regimes for these shared subsurface resources. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Water International.

This book analyses the legal challenges facing international cooperation on water management in the twenty-first century.

Groundwater is invisible, but its impact is visible everywhere. Everything around us relies on groundwater, our drinking water and sanitation, our food supply and our natural environment. Yet because it is invisible, information, management and governance of groundwater is often poor and inadequate. This book contributes to UN Water Groundwater year (2022), and to the effort of “making the invisible, visible”. Through worldwide case studies ranging from the Americas (California, Brazil), to Asia (India, Iran, Lao PDR, Nepal), Africa (Malawi, Tanzania, South Africa) and the MENA region (Lebanon, Morocco, Yemen), including cases of transboundary aquifers, the chapters in this edited volume reflect important recent advances in interdisciplinary knowledge on the governance, management, practice and science-policy interfaces of groundwater. An insightful resource for researchers and planners in the field of environmental policies, water laws, climate change and groundwater governance, this book comes with a new Introduction. The other chapters were originally published in Water International.

This book explores the many dimensions of water quality problems in different parts of the globe, with focus on problems of governance, from legal frameworks to social discourses and compensation measures. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.3 on Water and Sanitation emphasizes the centrality of improving water quality to attain sustainable development. Yet the obstacles to achieving this goal are significant. This book explores the variety of difficult, possibly intractable “wicked” problems of water quality governance around the world. Cases include the challenge of managing water from source to sea, exploring why attempts to do so have come up short in limiting harm to the Great Barrier Reef; differing social discourses on market based instruments in Canada; efforts to bring to closure the human legacies of Minamata methyl mercury poisoning half a century ago in Japan; current problems of mercury use in Andean mining; misalignment of established Eastern European water laws with those of the EU; water quality markets in China; the impacts of service coverage and quality on low income households in countries from New Zealand to Bangladesh and Malawi; the importance of perceptions, ranging from the use of treated wastewater by farmers in the MENA region to consumers in Fukushima and to users of the artificial river in Beijing’s Olympic Park; and finally the confluence of wicked problems in refugee camps facing COVID. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, Water International.

This book is the first of its kind on the emerging topic of source-to-sea management. It showcases different applications of the concept to improve the environmental health of freshwater, land and coastal and marine systems, drawing upon research performed across Europe, Africa and Asia. Improved management of land, freshwater, coasts and oceans is a key environmental challenge of our time. It is needed to prevent the millions of tons of plastic and other pollutants that enter the ocean from land-based sources each year. It is essential to reduce highly polluted, oxygen-depleted “dead zones” in our coastal and marine waters. Extensive diversions of the flows of rivers need to be avoided to ensure that little or no water reaches the sea. Source-to-sea (S2S) is an emerging concept to improve understanding of how to effectively manage freshwater, land, coastal and marine systems. The collected works in this book explore experiences with S2S management in diverse regions across Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, addressing sedimentation, nutrient and pharmaceutical pollution in freshwater and marine aquatic environments, and marine debris on the coasts and in the seas. It provides key insights into a few areas that should be of interest to those who want to learn from the lessons from case studies of applied S2S interventions. This book will be of great value to scholars, students and researchers interested in global freshwater, coastal zone, ocean management, sustainable development and environmental governance. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Water International.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the benefits and challenges of intensifying groundwater irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for improving smallholder agrarian livelihoods. Only about 3% of the groundwater resources of Sub-Saharan Africa are used for irrigated agriculture despite the subcontinent’s relative abundance of groundwater. The majority of the region’s smallholders are highly dependent on seasonal dryland cropping, making them extremely vulnerable to uncertain weather patterns and droughts. Improved irrigation capabilities through sustainable groundwater development could unleash smallholder farming and make it a major driver of economic growth, poverty reduction, climate resilience, and improved food security. So, why is groundwater so underused? Tapping into groundwater requires a major shift in farming practices and it has its own challenges and requirements – smallholder access to land and finance for irrigation infrastructure and equipment, gendered and equitable adoption options. This whole list is framed in terms of what the smallholder farmers need. Hence, this should also be put in this context, supply chains, energy access, resource availability, and institutional support. The chapters in this book present a picture that is not only heterogeneous across the region, but also hold some common denominators. They serve to enrich the discourse and help better understand the barriers along the pathways toward the sustainable and transformative adoption of groundwater irrigation. The scientific information provided herein would be of interest to researchers, practitioners, decision makers and planners with interest in the region. This book was originally published as a Special Issue of Water International journal.