Resilience In Groundwater Supply Systems: integrating resource-based approaches with agency, behaviour and choice in West Africa (RIGGS)

获得安全可靠的供水是非洲大部分地区的一个关键目标。地下水储备作为弹性供水服务的一部分，在实现这一目标方面发挥着越来越重要的作用。然而，污染和过度抽取的风险可能会削弱这种供应的弹性。私人开发的水井和钻孔数量迅速增加的趋势，引发了人们对供水容易受到自然或人为环境冲击的担忧。然而，支撑这一目标的社会、政治和经济进程却没有得到很好的阐述。这种情况的潜在规模在尼日利亚尤为明显，自1999年以来，钻孔的使用呈指数级增长（从占人口的10%增加到2015年的38%），而大多数其他形式的供水，特别是管道自来水，都在下降。开发有效的地下水管理方法来建立社区的恢复力是具有挑战性的，尤其是考虑到不同参与者的范围，他们的竞争利益和需求，以及水文地质环境的变化。社会科学中复原力研究的见解强调生态资源对冲击和变化的复原力如何与社会系统及其代理人的适应能力密切相关。现在做出的选择会产生持久的影响，但人们对这些选择却知之甚少。理解消费者、钻井商和政策参与者的选择需要强大的跨学科维度，并就如何建立社区和社会的弹性提出新的观点。该项目汇集了来自英国和尼日利亚的经济地理学、心理学、水文地质学和新闻学研究领域的学者之间独特的跨学科合作。该项目将开发和测试一个创新框架，以了解环境资源、社会系统和影响地下水供应恢复力的行为选择之间的相互作用。它将通过开发一种混合方法来实现这一目标，该方法将在尼日利亚的三个试点研究地区进行试验。这将使研究小组能够考虑地下水资源在建立社区对未来潜在环境冲击的恢复能力方面可以发挥的作用；私人抽象趋势对社区对突发或缓慢发生的环境危害的恢复能力构成的风险；不同媒体在构建社区对地下水资源的理解以及个人和组织的认知、选择和行为方面的作用；以及观念、选择、行为和机构如何影响（政策）行动，以减少脆弱性和增强复原力。该项目建立在世界银行、联合国儿童基金会、水援助组织和尼日利亚和非洲其他主要行为体公布的利益基础上。它将与这些组织和其他组织建立联系，以确保项目与他们的利益相关，并能告知他们未来的想法。为了最大限度地提高项目的效率，我们正在与该地区的领先网络-农村供水网络（RWSN）密切合作。这包括参加每五年一次的RWSN论坛，RWSN成员的调查和由RWSN主办的网络研讨会。这些行动将扩大项目的影响范围，并为试点行动的结果奠定基础。总的来说，该项目将加强对建立地下水资源在面对环境危害时的复原力的认识，办法是将基于资源的办法与更充分认识人类机构的影响结合起来。它将使我们了解灾害风险的潜在驱动因素、在不同情况下如何激励行动、传播和媒体在影响正在作出的选择和决定方面的作用以及多层次治理行为体在通过其政策行动制定这些选择方面所发挥的作用。

Access to safe and reliable water supplies is a key goal across most of Africa. Groundwater reserves increasingly play a critical role in achieving this as part of resilient water supply services. Yet, risks of contamination and over-abstraction threaten to undermine the resilience of this supply. The rapidly rising trend for privately-developed wells and boreholes raises concerns about the vulnerability of water supplies to natural or man-made environmental shocks. However, the social, political and economic processes underpinning this are poorly articulated. The potential scale of the situation is particularly marked in Nigeria where the use of boreholes has increased exponentially since 1999 (from 10% of the population to 38% in 2015), with most other forms of water supply, notably piped tap water, falling.Developing effective groundwater management approaches that build the resilience of communities is challenging, not least given the range of different actors involved, their competing interests and demands, and variations in the hydrogeological environment. Insights from resilience studies in social science emphasise how the resilience of ecological resources to shocks and change is critically linked to the adaptive capacity of social systems and their agents. Choices made now have long-lasting effects, yet these choices are little understood. Understanding the choices made by consumers, drillers and policy actors requires a strong interdisciplinary dimension and argues for new perspectives as to how the resilience of communities and societies might be built.The project brings together a unique interdisciplinary collaboration between academics in the fields of economic geography, psychology, hydrogeology and journalism studies from the UK and Nigeria. The project will develop and test an innovative framework for understanding the interplay between environmental resources, social systems and behavioural choices affecting the resilience of groundwater supplies. It will do this through developing a mixed-methods approach that will be trialled in three pilot study areas in Nigeria. This will enable the study team to consider the role groundwater resources can play in building the resilience of communities to future potential environmental shocks; the risks posed by private abstraction trends to the resilience of communities to sudden or slow-onset environmental hazards; the role of different media in framing communities' understanding of groundwater resources, and individuals' and organisations' perceptions, choices and behaviour; and how perceptions, choice, behaviour and agency can influence (policy) actions to reduce vulnerabilities and enhance resilience. The project builds on the published interests of the World Bank, UNICEF, WaterAid and other key actors in Nigeria and Africa. It will build links with these, and other, organisations to ensure that the project is relevant to their interests and can inform their future thinking. To maximise the effectiveness of the project we are working closely with the leading network operating in this area - the Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN). This includes participation in the quinquennial RWSN Forum, a survey of RWSN members and webinars hosted by RWSN. These actions will extend the reach of the project and set a context for the findings of the pilot actions. Overall, the project will strengthen knowledge for building the resilience of groundwater resources in the face of environmental hazards, through integrating resource-based approaches with a stronger appreciation of the influence of human agency. It will inform our understanding of the underlying drivers of disaster risk, how actions are incentivised in different contexts, the role of communications and media in influencing the choices and decisions being taken and the role played by multi-level governance actors in framing these choices through their policy actions.