Socio-environmental monitoring and co-management strategies to favor groundwater recharge and sustainable use in southern metropolises: Toward a co-managed aquifer recharge model?
Abstract
In rapidly growing southern metropolises, climatic, anthropogenic and demographic pressures combined with centralized network deficiencies, favor individual initiatives to access freshwater, e.g., illegal well settlements, pirate connection to the distribution network, rainwater harvesting, and storage in tanks. These strategies are amplified by extreme meteorological events (e.g., droughts) that also trigger cognitive mechanisms, such as denial, opportunism or a kind of “myopic” competition to access the resource without considering (knowing) collateral impacts. From these environmental and social dimensions, this review first evaluates the arguments for the integration of managed aquifer recharge (MAR) in socio-environmental observatories (SEO). SEO are structures concurrently monitoring natural, anthropogenic, and engineered processes but also relationships between stakeholders/managers and end-users. Second, in order to take advantage from the current private (and illegal) strategies, MAR implementation accompanied with a SEO structure is discussed to show how it promotes cognitive, social, economic, and governance conditions required for successful co-management.