CONTEXT
In the face of the global increase in groundwater extraction and its economic and ecological consequences, water management authorities are attempting to regulate its use. However, they encounter low compliance with the rules, often due to the exclusion of stakeholders in their development. These actors, perceived as opponents because of the focus on restricting withdrawals rather than offering beneficial solutions for them, struggle to engage in the management of this resource. Although their participation is now recognized as essential for defining extraction limits and allocation rules, its implementation remains complex in practice.
The key challenges are:
- Scientific: How can we understand the barriers and incentives for stakeholder participation in developing usage rules? What are their learning processes?
- Operational: How can we raise awareness and make groundwater visible? How can we ensure that a diverse group of actors complies with resource extraction rules?
OBJECTIVES
Funded by the Belmont Forum, the INCLUSIVE research project, in partnership with BRGM in France, aims to:
- Apply a transdisciplinary approach combining biophysical sciences and social sciences (political science, sociology, economics).
- Foster collective learning by identifying the conditions for successful participatory processes that ensure socially accepted resource usage rules.
- Ground its findings through a specific and contextualized approach across six case studies in France, the United States, and Taiwan.
- Build operational bridges by laying the foundation for localized communities of practice, bringing together water and soil management stakeholders, decision-makers, and economic actors.
- Identify the conditions that enable the adaptation of groundwater resource regulation systems.
