Community management of groundwater resources in rural India : research report : background papers on the causes, symptoms and mitigation of groundwater overdraft in India

This research report is an output of the project Community Management of Groundwater Resources in Rural India (Comman), funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) under its Knowledge and Research (KaR) programme. The primary aim of the project has been to assess the feasibility of applying local, user-based approaches to groundwater management as a means of mitigating, or avoiding, groundwater overdraft problems in rural areas. Concern over the sustainability of groundwater systems and groundwater-dependent livelihoods has grown in recent years. The project focus on community-level initiatives as a response to such concern is timely given the emphasis now placed, internationally, on the role of communities in natural resource governance. This Research Report report draws together six of the background papers prepared during the project on different aspects of groundwater resources management in India. The report is split into two sections. The first section looks at the problem of groundwater overdraft from different perspectives – physical controls and symptoms, socio-economic impacts, and from the wider context of livelihood transition and groundwater dependency. The second section addresses the management challenge, drawing distinctions between planned (or conventional) management, and self-initiated user-group management.