Project description
Reimagining the future of groundwater
Nearly one-third of the world’s largest aquifers are currently being depleted at unsustainable rates. Conventional governance typically frames overexploitation in tragedy-of-the-commons terms, blaming the greed of individual farmers. This is a narrative that overlooks the systemic pressure of state-led agricultural intensification. By incentivising high-yield, water-intensive crops, governments have arguably been the primary architects of the depletion. The ERC-funded Aquiverse project interrogates this dynamic by shifting the focus from top-down enforcement to the ‘hydro-social’ relationships that define water use. The project views an aquifer as a shared social space. By studying community-led initiatives in India, Morocco, and Peru, it will map how local practices of stewardship can succeed where centralised policies have faltered.
Objective
Groundwater resources are under threat from overexploitation, with nearly a third of the world’s largest aquifers being depleted faster than they can be replenished. Initiatives to curb depletion so far have been ineffective. This is because they narrowly attribute it to individual pumping behaviors without questioning the government-promoted intensification of agriculture that pushes farmers to use ever more groundwater in the first place. This project, Aquiverse, reframes groundwater governance by conceiving it as part of a politics of transformation that is anchored in what irrigators themselves do to care for and share the aquifers that they depend on for their livelihoods. Premised on acknowledging how the over-exploitation of aquifers is linked to neo-liberal processes of agricultural intensification, I propose conducting collaborative studies of six initiatives of caring for aquifers – of recharge, protection, conservation, recovery - in three countries (India, Peru and Morocco) where pressures on groundwater are particularly acute. How do these initiatives re-shape people’s connections with aquifers and with each other, and how, in the process, do possibilities of living and relating become reconfigured? The studies provide the empirical material for an exciting re-theorization of society-groundwater dynamics in relational terms, informed by a deep appreciation – both methodologically and epistemologically – of the co-constitution of hydrogeological and societal dynamics. This advances the science of groundwater governance by firmly inserting it in the broader transformations needed to continue to live healthily and well together on this planet, and by expanding government-led ‘command-and-control’ approaches with appreciation for the care, tinkering and community efforts that governing groundwater also entails. Aquiverse’s overall aim is to amplify possibilities for more harmonious – sustainable and just - ways of living with and making use of groundwater.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-ADG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
2611 AX Delft
Netherlands
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