Conditions préalables à un dialogue multi-acteurs en vue d'une gouvernance collaborative des eaux souterraines

The growing demand for water for food, energy, and other human uses, coupled with the impact of climate change on both the supply of and demand for water, is leading to an increasing dependence on groundwater. Water management in southern Mediterranean countries is challenged by these pressures especially in its semi-arid and arid parts, where groundwater provides a significant share of water uses, and is therefore a major factor in the economy. In recent years, collaborative governance was put forward as a solution to manage complex socio-ecological systems such as groundwater systems. However, the establishment of effective collaborative processes remains a major challenge due to the specificities of groundwater ("invisibility", interdependencies between actors, less easily available data, etc.). In this paper, we argue that collaborative groundwater governance is not a panacea everywhere, and that a number of conditions must be met from the start for this collaborative governance to be more effective and sustained over time. Through an analysis of literature and after reviewing 25 cases of collaborative groundwater governance across different regions in the world, we identified 17 conditions enabling multi-stakeholder dialogue towards collaborative groundwater governance. These conditions are related to the resource itself (size of the aquifer, access to alternative water resources, etc.), to the actors and their interactions (territorial attachment, conflicts, etc.) and to institutional frameworks (resources available, respect of existing laws and management instruments, etc). These conditions have been tested in two aquifers in northern Tunisia. Interviews were conducted with local stakeholders in order to validate the pre-identified conditions, to identify new conditions, or to revise the formulation of certain conditions, their indicators, and their associated data collection protocol. Our contribution presents the results of this work.