The Spanish water ?pressure cooker?: Threading the interplay between resource resilient water governance outcomes by strengthening the robustness of water governance processes.

This paper uses the metaphor of a pressure cooker to highlight how water problems in Spain are highly geographical and sectorial in nature, with some specific hotspots which raise the temperature of the whole water complex system, turning many potentially solvable water problems into ?wicked problems?. The paper discusses the tendency for water governance to be hydrocentric, when often the drivers and in turn the ?solutions? to Spanish water problems lie outside the water sphere. The paper analyzes of the current water governance system by looking at water governance as both a process, and its key attributes like participation, trans- parency, equity and rule of law, as well as an analysis of water governance as an outcome by looking at efficiency and sustainability of water use in Spain. It concludes on the need to have a deeper knowledge on the interactions of water governance as a process and as an outcome and potential synergies and arguing that water governance is an inherently political process which calls for strengthening the capacity of the system by looking at the interactions of these different governance attributes

Communities of innovation for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction: niche creation and antecipation

This paper presents the concept of communities of innovation for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. The paper discusses the added value of these types of communities to help address uncertain futures from the impact of climate change, which are highly context dependent. The paper frames these communities of innovation as part of innovation ecosystems in order to reflect on their key elements and added value. We argue that climate change and disaster risk management responses need to meet the needs of those experiencing problems with those that can offer solutions in distinct localities, including those that could fund or finance potential innovative solutions. Developing communities of innovation with the specific task of anticipating and creating niche solutions has been gaining traction in the EU. Some developed under the H2020 BRIGAID project are analysed here for other emergent COIs, as future-oriented communities tasked with the challenge to reduce disaster risks and enhance the climate resilience in their own spaces. This paper reflects on the experience of participants in these communities and their reflections and experience on whether these offer a useful form of organisation to anticipate future challenges, create niche solutions, and bring innovations to the market. The paper concludes with how communities of innovation can contribute to niche design and narratives of change to help achieve social and environmental resilience to reframe and help transition and transform current systems into more resilient, future-oriented communitiesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The local and national politics of groundwater overexploitation

Groundwater overexploitation is a worldwide phenomenon with important consequences and as yet few effective solutions. Work on groundwater governance often emphasises the roles of both formal statecentred policies and tools on the one hand, and self-governance and collective action on the other. Yet, empirically grounded work is limited and scattered, making it difficult to identify and characterise key emerging trends. Groundwater policy making is frequently premised on an overestimation of the power of the state, which is often seen as incapable or unwilling to act and constrained by a myriad of logistical, political and legal issues. Actors on the ground either find many ways to circumvent regulations or develop their own bricolage of patched, often uncoordinated, solutions; whereas in other cases corruption and capture occur, for example in water right trading rules, sometimes with the complicity – even bribing – of officials. Failed regulation has a continued impact on the environment and the crowding out of those lacking the financial means to continue the race to the bottom. Groundwater governance systems vary widely according to the situation, from state-centred governance to comanagement and rare instances of community-centred management. The collection of papers in this issue illustrates the diversity of situations, the key role of the state, the political intricacies of achieving sustainability and establishing a mode of governance that can account for the externalities of groundwater overdraft, and the opportunities to establish cooperative arrangements

Understanding complex relationships between human well-being and land use change in Mozambique using a multi-scale participatory scenario planning process

The path for bringing millions of people out of poverty in Africa is likely to coincide with important changes in land use and land cover (LULC). Envisioning the different possible pathways for agricultural, economic and social development, and their implications for changes in LULC, ecosystem services and society well-being, will improve policy-making. This paper presents a case that uses a multi-scale participatory scenario planning method to facilitate the understanding of the complex interactions between LULC change and the wellbeing of the rural population and their possible future evolution in Mozambique up to 2035. Key drivers of change were identified: the empowerment of civil society, the effective application of legislation and changes in rural technologies (e.g., information and communications technologies and renewable energy sources). Three scenarios were constructed: one characterized by the government promoting large investments; a second scenario characterized by the increase in local community power and public policies to promote small and medium enterprises; and a third, intermediate scenario. All three scenarios highlight qualitative large LULC changes, either driven by large companies or by small and medium scale farmers. The scenarios have different impact in wellbeing and equity, the first one implying a higher rural to urban area migration. The results also show that the effective application of the law can produce different results, from assuring large international investments to assuring the improvement of social services like education, health care and extension services. Successful application of these policies, both for biodiversity and ecosystem services protection, and for the social services needed to improve the well-being of the Mozambican rural population, will have to overcome significant barriers

Living Lab on improving groundwater governance in the Requena-Utiel aquifer

Resumen del trabajo presentado en el 7th IAHR Europe Congress, celebrado en Atenas (Grecia) del 07 al 09 de septiembre de 2022.The European research projects InTheMED and eGROUNDWATER share the aim of promoting innovative and sustainable management of the Mediterranean aquifers. One of the ways to achieve this objective is the creation of dynamic spaces in which all interested actors can cooperate, experiment and evaluate innovative ideas, different scenarios and new technologies on real cases of interest. In this regard, a living lab on improving groundwater governance, coordinated by the eGROUNDWATER team with the participation of the InTheMED team, was organized including all stakeholders who play a significant role in the management of the Requena-Utiel aquifer, which is a shared pilot site of the two projects. The aim of the living lab was to identify, together with stakeholders, problems and mitigation measures, and to evaluate possible strategies to satisfy the individual needs according to a sustainable use of the groundwater resources.Research financed by the InTheMED project, which is part of the PRIMA Programme supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (GA n. 1923). It has also received funding from the eGROUNDWATER project (GA n. 1921), part of the PRIMA programme supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme

Advancing Co-governance through Framing Processes: Insights from Action-Research in the Requena-Utiel Aquifer (Eastern Spain)

In recent years, co-management has been highlighted in the scientific literature as fundamental strategy for groundwater control. However, the development of this institutional architecture is complex and presents important pitfalls and challenges. In this article we analyse the recent experience of co-management in the Requena-Utiel aquifer (Spain), based on a participatory action research. It aims to advance the co-management of groundwater by facilitating a consensus among users, as a basis on which to support future self-governance measures. We used a cognitive framing approach, developed through interviews with local stakeholders, to analyse the conflicting visions on the aquifer management; and we developed an interactive framing approach, through workshops, to achieve a shared understanding of aquifer co-management. The research demonstrates the usefulness of these approaches to promote collective action and co-management in groundwater. It showed the key role that information and transparency play in gaining shared understanding and improving co-management; but also the difficulties of users in establishing agreements that question the current status quo on the aquifer

An Initial Framework for Understanding the Resilience of Aquifers to Groundwater Pumping

Groundwater stored in aquifers experiences a wide variety of natural, induced and/or anthropogenic disturbances. Among them, groundwater extraction is the main disturbance that affects most of the aquifers in the world. Aquifer’s resilience, understood as the potential of the aquifer to sustain disturbances on the long term and to guarantee essential qualities and functions, provides a key tool when assessing sustainable groundwater management alternatives. The aim of this work is to illustrate an aquifer resilience framework that can support groundwater sustainable management. A theoretical framework is based on the identification of the key variables that parameterize the quantitative and qualitative responses of the groundwater flow system to pumping. An example from the literature based in Denmark is provided as an illustration of the proposed framework. The results show that long-term high quality data are essential to make a step further in aquifers dynamic responses. The quantitative understanding of the aquifer’s behavior before, during and after groundwater extraction provides a valuable source of information in order to identify thresholds of change (tipping points, transitions or regime shifts) which could permit pro-active groundwater management decisions. Moreover, a deeper understanding on the aquifer’s dynamics provides useful information in order to avert threats that may put the sustainability of the system at risk

Integrating stakeholders' inputs to co-design climate resilience adaptation measures in Mediterranean areas with conflicts between wetland conservation and intensive agriculture

[EN] Designing sustainable management strategies in groundwater-dependent socio-economic systems in areas with scarce water resources and protected wetlands is a challenging issue. The high vulnerability of these systems to droughts will be exacerbated even further under future climate change (CC) and socio-economic scenarios. A novel integrated bottom-up/top-down approach is used to identify “climate resilient pathways”, from which to co-design adaptation strategies to reduce the impact of potential future CC and socio-economic scenarios. The approach followed two steps (1) the generation of local CC and socio-economic scenarios by downscaling global/regional climate models and (2) the identification and assessment of potential adaptation strategies through an iterative bottom-up/top-down approach. Top-down assessments of the impact of CC have been undertaken by propagating local scenarios within a chain of mathematical models based on expert criteria/assumptions. This allowed us to analyse of the physical vulnerability of the system under different potential CC and socio-economic scenarios by simulating them with a sequential modelling of rainfall–recharge, agriculture, and hydrological processes through a distributed groundwater finite difference model. These model results were discussed with the stakeholders at a first workshop, which aimed to identify potential adaptation strategies. The influence of the adaptation strategies on the future hydrological status was assessed by simulating them through the chain of models. These results were the inputs into the discussions at a second workshop, which aimed to validate and/or improve the results of the first workshop. The methodology was applied in the Upper Guadiana River Basin, where there is a long-standing conflict between wetland conservation and groundwater overexploitation for intensive agriculture. The future horizon 2016–2045 is analysed with the scenarios compatible with the emission scenario RCP4.5. The research has allowed us to conclude that groundwater pumping reduction would be the most robust and effective measure to reduce the impact of CC in the area.This research was partially supported by the research projects SIGLO-AN (RTI2018-101397-B-I00) and SIGLO-PRO (PID2021-128021OB-I00) from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Programa Estatal de ICDCI orientado a los Retos de la Sociedad), the GeoE.171.008-TACTIC Project funded by European Union's Horizon 2020 - Research and Innovation Framework Programme, and the NextGenerationEU Fund through the programme “Fondos de Recuperación”.Peer reviewe