Can distance-base agreements mitigate the overexploitation of transboundary aquifers?
Abstract
Management of international transboundary aquifers faces a variety of challenges due to competing interests and overall lack of policy frameworks with which to build transboundary agreements. As a result, only a handful of international treaties regulate shared groundwater, while hundreds of agreements exist over shared rivers. Among available options, distance-based agreements seek to limit strategic incentives to overexploit the aquifer by creating a `no-pumping' buffer zone around the border. This approach is easier to monitor and enforce than agreements focused on limiting pumping volume. However, despite its potential, it has been applied to one aquifer (the Disi, shared by Jordan and Saudi Arabia), despite numerous water stressed transboundary aquifers in urgent need of successful regulation. To what extent is the existing agreement an exception? Under what circumstances could distance based agreements address overexploitation in other transboundary aquifers? We address these questions by coupling a game theoretical framework with an analytical element groundwater model. We analyze key stylized physical configurations of transboundary aquifers and identify the set of hydrogeologic and economic conditions that are necessary for successful distance based agreements. We find that observable features associated with surface water and topography play a particularly salient role. This suggests that global satellite imagery can be leveraged to evaluate the potential for distance based agreement in a global assessment.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMH145.0006M
- Keywords:
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- 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1878 Water/energy interactions;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 6344 System operation and management;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES