COLOMBO, SRI LANKA – Mismanagement of
groundwater threatens our drinking water, food production, and climate change
adaptation prospects, warns a statement endorsed by the International Water Management Institute’s
(IWMI) and signed by 700+ global experts.
The call to action highlighted in Nature this week
cites recent scientific breakthroughs on groundwater’s vital role in supporting
rivers globally. It supplies more than 40 percent of the water used for the world’s
agricultural irrigation, drinking water to two billion people, and helps
regions cope
with worsening droughts. Millions of low income smallholder farmers, in particular, rely on groundwater in arid and
semi-arid areas and during times of drought, making it one
of nature’s best
solutions to beat climate variability.
Groundwater
makes up 99 percent of the Earth’s liquid freshwater. But in many places, warn the
experts, groundwater is under threat from overexploitation and contamination, mostly due to poor understanding,
land use planning, and management.
IWMI Director General Claudia Sadoff and
groundwater lead researcher Karen Villholth, who coordinates GRIPP – the Groundwater Solutions
Initiative for Policy and Practice – joined the 700+
signatories along with many individual experts and practitioners from IWMI’s partners.
GRIPP is a key global partnership on groundwater science and policy, bringing
together nearly 30 international institutes to strengthen groundwater
initiatives and solutions.
“Groundwater is often out of sight, so we
take it for granted, or misuse it in ways that impact the most vulnerable
people and ecosystems.” says Sadoff. “IWMI is joining global experts, because if
we allow groundwater to be further degraded or depleted, it threatens our
ability to respond to increasing droughts and floods. And we’re closing in on real
dangers to food and drinking water due to over-exploitation
and mismanagement. The impacts could be global.”
The call to action comes as the world
eyes the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Madrid (COP 25) and
begins the Decade
of Action on the UN Agenda 2030. Recent evidence points to the potential
for groundwater as a major solution for helping the world – especially
the Global South – adapt to droughts and climate extremes.
Over 700 scientists, practitioners and
experts from over 75 countries around the world have now signed the call. The statement
highlights the risks for 1.7 billion people who live above groundwater reserves
that are stressed by overuse.
The statement calls for three actions:
1)
Put the spotlight on global groundwater sustainability through a UN World Water Development Report and a Global Groundwater
Summit in 2022, the year when groundwater will be the UN
World Water Day’s key focus.
2)
Commit to managing and governing groundwater sustainably from local to
global scales by applying sustainability guiding principles locally, regionally
and globally by 2030.
3)
Invest in groundwater governance and management by implementing groundwater sustainability plans for stressed aquifers
by 2030. This means investing in nature-based solutions supporting groundwater,
capacity building, awareness raising and developing better monitoring,
reporting and management systems.
“Groundwater is so fundamental to our
food and our drinking water, and critical to our ecosystems, but it’s still
overlooked and mismanaged,” says Villholth, whose work is
supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE). “Our call to action will ensure groundwater
stays on the radar following this week’s COP25
climate meetings. We’re stressing the critical importance of managing
water properly for climate resilience, and under that the key role of
groundwater. We are pushing hard now to get it on the global agenda to sustain
these benefits and avoid widespread crises – in keeping with the Sustainable
Development Goals horizon of 2030.”
