Breaking the free-access trap: Adaptive groundwater governance in Pakistan

Groundwater governance in Pakistan represents a persistent case of governance inertia, where a de facto free-access regime continues despite growing recognition of depletion and sustainability risks. Although policy frameworks increasingly acknowledge over-extraction, regulatory reforms have remained weakly implemented and politically constrained. This study examines why groundwater governance reforms remain difficult to initiate and what conditions may enable transitions toward more adaptive and regulated governance. Drawing on insights from Common-Pool Resource (CPR) theory, adaptive governance and the Science–Policy–Practice Interface (SPPI), the study analyses national and provincial policy frameworks alongside evidence from six participatory multi-stakeholder workshops involving farmers, scientists and policymakers in Punjab and Sindh. The findings show that governance inertia is not simply a consequence of weak institutions or inadequate data, but a politically and institutionally stabilised condition reproduced through fragmented mandates, ambiguous groundwater rights linked to landownership, political incentives and misalignments in credibility, salience and legitimacy across stakeholder groups. By operationalising SPPI in a groundwater governance context, the study demonstrates how divergent stakeholder interpretations constrain collective action and limit the feasibility of reform even where sustainability risks are widely recognised. The findings further show that transitions toward sustainable groundwater governance are shaped not only by regulatory design, but also by institutional readiness, stakeholder legitimacy and the sequencing of reforms under politically constrained conditions. The study contributes to groundwater governance scholarship by explaining how interacting institutional, political and legitimacy dynamics stabilise unsustainable groundwater systems and constrain governance transitions in politically constrained settings.