Review of Participatory Approaches Implemented in Different Countries to Manage Groundwater

Deep confined aquifers (CAq) are strategic resources for the supply of drinking water, mainly due to protection against pollution offered by overlying geological layers and their hydrological inertia which reduces their sensitivity to climatic change. This presentation investigates how to develop a shared understanding of those complex aquifers, a pre-requisite to involving stakeholders in the definition of management objectives and rules. Such participation ensures that various knowledge are taken into account and that principles of justice, equity and sustainability are discussed. But actively involving stakeholders, and especially citizens, in CAq management poses specific challenges. Because of its invisible and complex nature, CAq are less known and less appropriated than surface water. This is even truer for CAq which are the focus of the DEESAC project (Sustainability and Exploitability of Groundwater in CAq). Building knowledge about these resources requires technical and scientific mediation and tools. It also requires to mobilize and articulate different types of knowledge and expertise in order to develop common knowledge and build communities of interest around these resources. A second challenge is to support stakeholders in the construction of long-term management strategies by identifying indicators of “good status” which can ensure sustainability of the resources over the long term. Our intervention will present the results of a literature review on participatory approaches implemented in in France and in different countries (i) to define indicators of “good status” for CAq, (ii) to set objective values for these indicators and (iii) to determine associated withdrawal thresholds, with a view to sustainable resource management. The aim is to identify the different ways in which stakeholders were involved in defining these elements: which stakeholders were involved, how and at what stages of the decision-making process? What data and/or tools were used, in what format and according to what principles of use?