Socio-groundwater toolbox

To date, hydrological issues are playing a key role in the implementation of the goals in which water has a crosscutting role linked to many other Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) set in the 2030 Agenda. According to SDG 6, there is a need to monitor eight different interrelated targets globally. At present, several global tools and initiatives for water monitoring exist. A prerequisite for their implementation is to have a thorough knowledge of the system and a consistent database, usually collected at a country and global scale worldwide. Nevertheless, this is not the case in less developed countries where databases are not often reliable. This calls for a clear understanding of the groundwater system - or groundwater literacy - defined here as: the knowledge of the users about the resource, some of its attributes, and their perception and valuation of their impacts in the system. To overcome this, a transdisciplinary socio- groundwater toolbox (S-GT) for a better groundwater resource management. For this toolbox five different, interrelated, methodologies were applied: 1) Local Groundwater Balance Model (LGBM), to quantify groundwater flows associated with present-day economic sectors; 2) mental model approach: to analyze stakeholders’ risk perception regarding groundwater pollution, by eliciting mental models; 3) underwater exploration: to obtain insights about current and real status of local wells and sinkholes; 4) community-based conservation: to integrate local values, beliefs and perceptions into groundwater conservation; 5) environmental activism: to directly involve stakeholders in local well clean-ups, and community events. These methods were developed in a transdisciplinary process with stakeholders spanning sectors.