Aquiverse: a collaborative study of initiatives of groundwater care to re-think, improve and support its governance.

Groundwater resources are under threat from overexploitation, with nearly a third of the world’s largest aquifers being depleted faster than they can be replenished. Initiatives to curb depletion so far have been ineffective. This is because they narrowly attribute it to individual pumping behaviors without questioning the government-promoted intensification of agriculture that pushes farmers to use ever more groundwater in the first place. This project, Aquiverse, reframes groundwater governance by conceiving it as part of a politics of transformation that is anchored in what irrigators themselves do to care for and share the aquifers that they depend on for their livelihoods. Premised on acknowledging how the over-exploitation of aquifers is linked to neo-liberal processes of agricultural intensification, I propose conducting collaborative studies of six initiatives of caring for aquifers – of recharge, protection, conservation, recovery - in three countries (India, Peru and Morocco) where pressures on groundwater are particularly acute. How do these initiatives re-shape people’s connections with aquifers and with each other, and how, in the process, do possibilities of living and relating become reconfigured? The studies provide the empirical material for an exciting re-theorization of society-groundwater dynamics in relational terms, informed by a deep appreciation – both methodologically and epistemologically – of the co-constitution of hydrogeological and societal dynamics. This advances the science of groundwater governance by firmly inserting it in the broader transformations needed to continue to live healthily and well together on this planet, and by expanding government-led ‘command-and-control’ approaches with appreciation for the care, tinkering and community efforts that governing groundwater also entails. Aquiverse’s overall aim is to amplify possibilities for more harmonious – sustainable and just - ways of living with and making use of groundwater.