World Bank

This case study by the World Bank aims to understand and address the paradox at the heart of the groundwater governance challenge in India in order to elevate the need for investing in and promoting proactive reforms toward its management. It examines the impediments to better governance of groundwater, and explores opportunities for using groundwater to help developing countries adapt to climate change. It attempts to understand the practical issues that arise in establishing robust national governance frameworks for groundwater and in implementing these frameworks at the aquifer level.

The case study focused on the national, state and local levels. At the national and state levels, it analyzed the policy, legal, and institutional arrangements to identify the demand and supply management and incentive structures that have been established for groundwater management. At the local level, it assessed the operations, successes, and constraints facing local institutions in the governance of a number of aquifers within peninsula India, on the coast and on the plain of the Ganges river valley.

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This working paper by World Bank analyzes how changes in the prices of land, labor, and food induced by modest temperature increases over the next three decades will affect household-level welfare in India. Global warming is expected to heavily impact agriculture, the dominant source of livelihood for the world’s poor. Using a simple comparative statics framework, the paper studies the distributional implications of climate change at the sub-national level.

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