Bottom-up integrated approach for sustainable groundwater management in rural areas

Groundwater resources represent the largest volume of all unfrozen fresh water on Earth. However the knowledge and understanding of this precious resource is very little, if compared to surface water, especially when considering the general public and policy makers. Nonetheless groundwater abstraction for human needs significantly increased in the past sixty years (Foster and Chilton 2003), playing a major role in agricultural production and the support to rural livelihoods (especially in developing regions; Giordano and Villholth 2007). For this reason it is of paramount importance to promote groundwater protection and to raise awareness on both its relevance and vulnerability to anthropic pressure. This, on the one hand, implies the implementation of science- based management practices, clearly resulting from sound hydrogeological and hydrogeochemical investigations, but also to start considering the social impacts of scarce and/or polluted water. Indeed, groundwater resources if carefully managed can significantly contribute in meeting the increasing water demand, sustaining agricultural needs and adapting to global climate change (WWAP 2012). Based on these assumptions, a bottom-up integrated approach for sustainable groundwater management in rural areas is proposed as a replicable example of a methodology for tackling groundwater issues