Abstract
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.
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Acknowledgements
The first author also acknowledges the assistance of John Chilton, Marianne Stuart, Dan Lapworth & Paul Speight in providing up-to-date research results and field data for the English Chalk. The second author wishes to thank SUEZ Solutions and CETAQUA for the support given in collecting the information quoted in this paper from South-Eastern Spain. The authors confirm that there is no conflict of interest associayed with the publication of this paper.
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Foster, S., Custodio, E. Groundwater Resources and Intensive Agriculture in Europe – Can Regulatory Agencies Cope with the Threat to Sustainability?. Water Resour Manage 33, 2139–2151 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-019-02235-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-019-02235-6