ENFORCEMENT AND COMPLIANCE MONITORING FOR THE SUSTAINABLE AND EQUITABLE MANAGEMENT OF INTERNATIONALLY SHARED AQUIFERS

Awareness and concern for the sustainable and equitable management “internationally-shared” aquifers (ISAs) has attracted renewed attention in recent months with the publication of a “world transboundary aquifer systems map” as part of the World-wide Hydrogeological Mapping and Assessment Programme (WHYMAP) series. In the interests of maintaining global security, a major challenge will be to ensure ISAs are managed co-operatively, with competing demands for domestic supply, sanitation, agriculture, industry, mining and water-dependent ecosystems fully addressed and mutually agreed. Notwithstanding the difficulties of achieving and maintaining international agreement on the appropriate management approach, any agreement is destined to fail without realistic operational goals and the development of monitoring strategies that include appropriate enforcement and compliance indicators. A major difficulty is that, unlike rivers, aquifers are three-dimensional, high storage systems with low, sometimes negligible replenishment rates and a very slow response to external stresses such as pollution and climate change. In ongoing work, the scale of the ISA “monitoring challenge” is currently being investigated through a series of “type-case” groundwater flow models developed in transient mode using MODFLOW. The models are being run to assess the sensitivity of a range of alternative monitoring strategies to various levels of non-compliance by neighbouring countries. The overall purpose of this work is to provide a broad set of monitoring principles that can provide guidance during the development of ISA management agreements.