TRANSFORMING GROUNDWATER KNOWLEDGE FOR POLICY AND GOVERNANCE: THE GROUNDWATER PROJECT

2022 was the UN Year of Groundwater and in 2023 the World Bank issued its landmark report: The Hidden Wealth of Nations: Groundwater in Times of Climate Change. Hence, groundwater has attracted attention in the global policy realm. However, lack of clear understanding of groundwater within the various stakeholder domains is now the key limitation to progress. Although there have been great advances in groundwater understanding from research and experience during the past 50 years, this knowledge is cloistered in the peer reviewed journals and symposia publications not written for understanding beyond the specialty niche. What is not understandable cannot be actionable by the various stakeholder readerships. Almost all are issued only in English, most without free access. Knowledge that is considered common knowledge is contained in the existing textbooks used in university teaching. The first textbook to cover all that was considered modern hydrogeology at the time was Freeze-Cherry Groundwater, 1979. Many other such textbooks have appeared since, each as an updating of the standard topics in introductory university courses, however because of the great advances in science, all are superficial representations of what groundwater knowledge has become, with many textbook topics incomplete, misleading, or incorrect. For groundwater to be properly represented in groundwater management and policy, it is important that there be correctness and balance in the knowledge portrayal, regardless of the readership for which documents are produced. The Groundwater Project is a philanthropic, international effort to publish books online of knowledge synthesized by volunteer experts for many levels of readership for access by free downloading with translations into several languages. This presentation provides examples of important groundwater concepts commonly espoused incorrectly in textbooks that have coverage in GW-P books published or soon to come that explains the concepts in their correct form for various readerships.