Management of groundwater as a common pool resource (CPR)
Student name: Ms Anuradha Garg
Guide: Ms Fawzia Tarannum
Year of completion: 2016
Host Organisation: International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Anand
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr Tushar Shah and Mr Shilp Verma
Abstract: Common Pool Resource (CPR) management is a complex task due to involvement of large number of stakeholders. Forests, river basins etc. are classic examples of common pool resources and are highly sensitive to the scale at which the resource is managed. In India, groundwater supports the backbone of country’s economy i.e. agriculture and is subject to overextraction due to growing demand especially in the back drop of climate change and unpredictable monsoon. For the past few decades, India has been indiscriminately extracting groundwater to increase agricultural production without assessing the forthcoming situation. The country has an erratic monsoon precipitation pattern which rarely helps in natural replenishment of the exploited resource considering its rate of extraction. So a sustainable option for replenishing the groundwater is artificial recharge of aquifers. Interestingly, characteristics of a common pool resource are not only limited to its usage but can also be well understood from the attempts made to reinvigorate the resource. This study tries to understand the similar aspects: how people locally manage their groundwater resource, what are the problems or externalities coming their way and how they learn to deal with them.
Holiyas (also called bhungroos) are locally adopted rainwater harvesting structures. The rural communities of Gujarat have been using them in traditional way for many years. At the same time, they have been doing modifications in its design and usage, as per their learning experience. It was interesting to see how people in the Ekalva village (study area) of north Gujarat have adapted to the existence of holiyas under various circumstances.
Key words: Holiyas, common pool resource, groundwater management, salinity, aquifer recharge
