Description

In tone, the workshop marked a major shift in the groundwater debate from development and access equity issues to the emerging issues associated with management for sustainability. Numerous themes all centered around the concern of how to manage scarce supplies to meet multiple, and often conflicting, objectives under conditions of intense social and political debate ran throughout discussions at the workshop. Groundwater was recognized as an extremely valuable resource. As a result, actions affecting access to it and information about it are sensitive. Development - drilling wells to gain access to groundwater is politically popular. Management, the set of actions and institutional mechanisms which result in the allocation of scarce (and in some cases, overdeveloped) supplies, is not.

Equity remained an important concern for participants. It was no longer framed, however, as simply an issue of access for all to an unlimited resource. Instead, there was general recognition of scarcity and the far more difficult equity issues involved when limited water supplies are allocated among competing users. As a result, virtually all discussions at the workshop converged rapidly on institutional and social issues. The social and political dimensions of management were seen as presenting far more challenges than their technical counterparts. Furthermore, most participants recognized that technological innovations also demand accompanying institutional innovations to support the technology and to enable management objectives to be pursued. This focus on institutional aspects was surprising given the range and numerical dominance of people with technical or scientific backgrounds present.

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