When Does Agricultural Self-Management of Groundwater ‘Work'? Empirical Lessons from Australia and New Zealand

One of our greatest environmental challenges concerns the management of scarce groundwater resources in the face of burgeoning agricultural water use.  In recent decades, governments have increasingly sought to address this challenge by pursuing interventionist regulatory approaches in the agricultural sphere, including government driven water planning and regulation. Yet, this intervention has been widely criticized for failing to provide adequate answers to pressing groundwater problems. Particularly vocal criticisms have arisen from agricultural water users who bear the brunt of water use restrictions, yet must respond to the countervailing consumer demands for food and fiber production at minimal costs.

In response, practitioners and scholars have called for experimentation with new agricultural self-management approaches that promise to better manage groundwater, while substantially increasing participation and ownership by transferring the day-to-day management responsibilities to water users, under agreed terms and subject to accountability processes.

While there have been comprehensive studies of self-management in surface water and unique common pool resource settings, there have been very few studies that consider whether, when and how agricultural self-management of groundwater can operate as a credible policy tool within an overarching framework of private property rights and government regulation. This article explores these issues by drawing on 60 interviews with agricultural irrigators, government and non-government stakeholders from three Australian and New Zealand case studies into agricultural self-management of groundwater quality and quantity.

The findings reveal that while agricultural self-management has limitations (including deficits in farmers’ water management skills and a lack of legitimacy with environmental stakeholders) it can also provide substantial economic benefits to farmers, deliver increased buy-in and stewardship over groundwater and enhance compliance. The paper explores the reasons behind these successes and the insights for policy and theory flowing from these findings for designing and implementing self-management mechanisms for achieving sustainable agricultural management of groundwater.