Free Flow

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ransboundary

ater

anagement

region corresponds to four times larger than that of the actual results

during the six years from 2004 to 2009.

The project has been awarded the 2013 UN-Water ‘Water for

Life’ Best Practices award in the Best Water Management Practice

category. The achieved system for creating groundwater in the

Kumamoto region has been evaluated as the combined work of the

natural system of Mount Aso and ‘local human activity’.

The 63rd United Nations General Assembly adopted the resolu-

tion of the draft articles on the Law of Transboundary Aquifers in

December 2008. The draft articles of this resolution were prepared

by the United Nations International Law Commission (ILC) in

cooperation with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization (UNESCO) International Hydrological

Programme (IHP) after six years of work and discussions. The

main concept of the law depends on the fact that groundwater,

like oil and natural gas, is a shared natural resource. The American

Society of International Law has evaluated the work by ILC as

constituting a ‘landmark event’ for the protection and manage-

ment of groundwater resources, which have been neglected

as a subject of international law despite the social, economic,

environmental and strategic importance of groundwater. The

36th International Association of Hydrogeologists International

Conference was held in Toyama, Japan in October 2008, with

the main theme of Integrated Groundwater Science and Human

Well-being. The UNESCO Chair Workshop on

International Strategy for Sustainable Groundwater

Management: Transboundary Aquifers and Integrated

Watershed Management was held in October 2009 at

the University of Tsukuba, Japan.

These recent waves of activity on groundwater indi-

cate that thinking on this resource has shifted from

development to management, and that management

endeavours should be developed keeping in mind

that groundwater is a shared natural resource. This

concept is led by and based on scientific knowledge

that the natural groundwater flow system depends on

an aquifer system whose boundaries do not coincide

with national state boundaries. It is a concept that

applies not only to national states, but also to aquifers

crossing regional administrative boundaries within a

given country.

In 2009 the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded

to Professor Elinor Ostrom (together with Professor

Oliver Williamson) for her distinguished research work

on ‘economic governance, especially the commons’.

Professor Ostrom found that for the suitable manage-

ment of commons, it is necessary for a self-governance

system to be established by demand-side communities

and not only controlled by the national government or

the capital market system. It is said that the transbound-

ary groundwater resources management implemented

in the Kumamoto region is an excellent example of a

typical self-governance system established by the local

government and the city people (the demand-side

communities using 100 per cent groundwater resources

for their domestic water use) for managing regional

groundwater resources.

As mentioned above, under Japanese law there is no

unified national law to manage groundwater resources

as a whole. Therefore, groundwater resources in Japan

are mainly managed by the local government’s ordi-

nance which is limited to cover the area within that

government’s boundary and does not coincide with

the boundary of groundwater reservoirs, namely the

transboundary aquifers. Recently, however, Japanese

municipalities, communities and citizens have become

aware that the groundwater resource is a shared

natural resource and they are finding ways to define

this concept and include it in their groundwater reserve

ordinances or practices.

The concept of transboundary aquifers provides a very

important perspective on groundwater as a shared natural

resource – and the realization that we must coexist with

these limited and important natural resources in order

to ensure human well-being. As the world’s water needs

continue to grow, groundwater will become increas-

ingly important and the creation of wisdom with regard

to coexisting with groundwater is an increasingly urgent

issue. The establishment of a self-governance system

depending on the autonomy of the demand-side commu-

nities for groundwater resources management will help

to ensure an adequate water supply for the future, espe-

cially for our future generations.

Image: J. Shimada