Sustainable Groundwater Management Integrated with Environmentally Sound Land-use Planning

摘要

Sound land-use activities must be implemented in accordance with the ambient environmental situation as well as social needs. The psychologist Abraham Maslow stipulated that social needs conform to a pyramidal hierarchy of human needs, and cautioned that a population will only begin to focus seriously upon higher-level needs when lower level needs are fulfilled. Similarly, effective groundwater management can only be carried out step-by-step, fulfilling lower level needs before addressing higher level needs. Operational remediation activities must be backed by full public participation, in compliance with the concerns and needs of the resident population. Only then can sustainable groundwater management succeed. This paper suggests a pyramidal scheme, integrating groundwater resources management and environmental land-use planning with the population's needs. The Northern region of Israel's Coastal aquifer has been addressed as a case in point.