EAGER: Comparative Analysis of Institutions to Govern the Groundwater Commons

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Groundwater, a classic common pool resource, is a vital and life-sustaining resource for billions of people worldwide and for many ecosystems. It is crucial during drought when surface water is limited. Yet unsustainable depletion of groundwater is now well documented on regional and national scales, and overdraft is projected to increase under climate change. Although groundwater has been the subject of theorizing about institutional arrangements to govern the management of common pool resources, further work is essential if we are to prevent depletion of this vital natural resource. A critical area of study is how groundwater institutions evolve over time and how this dynamic process can incentivize sustainable resource use and more inclusive management. A comparison of alternative approaches will be valuable in devising management systems in multiple settings where groundwater is an indispensable resource and where there are unsustainable levels of demand. Through the training and mentoring of graduate students, and the use of presentations and publications, it will both advance the integration of research and teaching and enable the broad dissemination of research findings. Research will be conducted in California where groundwater is a major water supply source for human consumption, agriculture and many ecosystems. The state's geographic, physical and social diversity complements the diversity of management institutions in other groundwater-reliant regions. The investigators will employ a new dynamic and comparative approach that links the evolution of resource institutions to resource outcomes. This will be accomplished utilizing an exploration over time of two very different models: Court Adjudication - where the court defines and assigns private rights to groundwater; and legislatively created Special Act Districts (SAD)-with a mandate to provide enhanced local public regulation of groundwater. Both adjudicated basins and SADs are embedded within polycentric systems, interacting with state, federal and local institutions, and while both have been noted as potential approaches to achieve sustainable groundwater management, no research has explicitly examined whether this is the case over time. Research will analyze their different foundations and mandates and closely observe their dynamic development over time. The goals are to understand how they incentivize different management approaches, evolve specific patterns of horizontal and vertical interdependence, and how these interactions over time produce specific resource outcomes. Findings will help to formulate recommendations and guidelines for the future sustainable management of common pool resources in general, and groundwater in particular.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.