Why Manage Shared Aquifers?

Every year, the pressure to use groundwater resources from aquifers increases across the globe, especially in arid regions. Rising human populations, demands from thirsty industrial and agricultural sectors and a global decline of accessible and clean surface waters, in part due to climate change, are all drivers for national and local water managers to bet their hopes more on underground reservoirs.

Many of these aquifers are transboundary – shared by two or more countries. And sometimes, countries sharing aquifers are not always the best of friends. That’s not great news when the action of one country, for example the over-abstraction of groundwater, leads to a rapid depletion of groundwater including that in neighbouring countries. It becomes an even bigger problem if the aquifer is not being naturally recharged, say from rain or adjacent rivers. No recharge means that it is just a matter of time before the groundwater runs dry.

Experience now shows that improving the wise management of shared aquifers depends on two key strategies. The first is to gain a better understanding of how the aquifer works as a system through the most advanced science available – especially through the use of cutting-edge ‘isotopic techniques’. The development of such an improved knowledge base then becomes an essential tool for governments and water managers to help them make appropriate decisions for future management – for example, about how much groundwater to abstract and from where.

The second strategy is to enhance cooperation between the countries sharing the aquifer, for example from exchanging information and lessons learned. Ideally, a regional legal and institutional framework could also be created within which joint analysis and decision-making would be conducted, and through which potential conflicts could be avoided.

IAEA Support for Countries Sharing Aquifers

The IAEA is helping countries to implement both wise management strategies through a variety of projects targeted at transboundary aquifers. All of them focus on the improvement of scientific understanding and filling information gaps. Some, like the new ‘Nubian Project’, also work on improving inter-governmental cooperation, with financial support from the Global Environmental Facility (GEF).

Based on its experiences with transboundary aquifers, the IAEA has already achieved a number of success stories where the scientific understanding of how shared aquifers function has been enhanced. This critical information has been used to help water managers in countries sharing aquifers better meet the needs of the populations that they serve – people who are dependent on groundwater resources for many of their daily water uses.