IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/natres/v27y2003i2p130-141.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustaining Asia’s groundwater boom: An overview of issues and evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Tushaar Shah
  • Aditi Deb Roy
  • Asad S Qureshi
  • Jinxia Wang

Abstract

This article suggests that Asia’s groundwater socio‐ecology is at an impasse. Rapid growth in groundwater irrigation in South Asia and the North China plains during the period 1970–95 has been the main driver of the agrarian boom in these regions. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China account for the bulk of the world’s use of groundwater in agriculture. On the plus side, groundwater development has provided sustenance to agrarian economies and millions of rural livelihoods. On the downside, it has created chronic problems of resource depletion and quality deterioration. While problems of groundwater depletion, pollution and quality deterioration are indeed serious, so are the consequences of the degradation of the resource for those that have come to precariously depend upon groundwater irrigation. Three problems currently afflict groundwater use: depletion due to overdraft; water logging and salinization; and pollution due to agricultural, industrial and other human activity. The pathology of the decline in groundwater socio‐ecology reflects a remarkably similar pattern across regions. The critical issue for Asia now is: what might be done to sustain and revive these groundwater socio‐ecologies vital to the region’s economy? This article reviews a variety of techno‐institutional approaches. However, transposing lessons from the industrialized world uncritically in the Asian context may not work. A more nuanced understanding of the peculiarities of Asia’s groundwater socio‐ecology is needed.

Suggested Citation

  • Tushaar Shah & Aditi Deb Roy & Asad S Qureshi & Jinxia Wang, 2003. "Sustaining Asia’s groundwater boom: An overview of issues and evidence," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(2), pages 130-141, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:natres:v:27:y:2003:i:2:p:130-141
    DOI: 10.1111/1477-8947.00048
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1477-8947.00048
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1477-8947.00048?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Urvashi Sharma & Adeeba Khan & Venkatesh Dutta, 2021. "Long-term sustainability of groundwater resources in the central Ganga Alluvial Plain, India: Study from Gomti River Basin," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(11), pages 16015-16037, November.
    2. Guangyao Chi & Xiaosi Su & Hang Lyu & Guigui Xu & Yiwu Zhang & Ningfei Li, 2021. "Simulating the Shallow Groundwater Level Response to Artificial Recharge and Storage in the Plain Area of the Daqing River Basin, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-17, May.
    3. Sarbani Mukherjee & Durba Biswas, 2016. "An Enquiry into Equity Impact of Groundwater Markets in the Context of Subsidised Energy Pricing: A Case Study," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 5(1), pages 63-73, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:natres:v:27:y:2003:i:2:p:130-141. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1477-8947 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.