Groundwater Resources and Intensive Agriculture in Europe – Can Regulatory Agencies Cope with the Threat to Sustainability?

Groundwater sustainability is a widespread concern relating especially to intensive agriculture, and resource management has to confront both excessive waterwell abstraction and pollution load. A balance has to be struck between the cost and benefit of interventions, taking into account the susceptibility to degradation and vulnerability to pollution of the aquifer system in question, and the legitimate interests of all water and land users, and the environment. Over more than 40 years the European Union has accumulated major experience on the impact of agricultural intensification on groundwater, and has been in the vanguard of ‘integrated and adaptive’ policy formulation in an attempt to strengthen resource management. In this context the paper provides a critical review of the long-term evolution of scientific understanding and policy response for aquifers in Eastern England and South-Eastern Spain. Inherent weakness of the regulatory agencies are revealed and analysed. Considerable time-lags between initial recognition of potential problems and their cross-sectoral acceptance, after policy formulation until practical implementation of management measures at field level, and as a result of ‘groundwater system inertia’, considerably complicate the picture.