A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF GROUNDWATER REGULATION POLICIES IN AGRICULTURAL REGIONS

Abstract

Groundwater is essential for global water security, agricultural production, and rural livelihoods. However, excessive groundwater abstraction has resulted in declining water tables, aquifer depletion, reduced groundwater availability, land subsidence, deterioration of water quality, and degradation of groundwater-dependent ecosystems. This paper offers a systematic review of groundwater management policies in agricultural zones using bibliometric analysis and qualitative policy evaluation. Using a PRISMA-based method, fifty-three scholarly papers on the topic, published from 2021 to 2025, were selected from seven thousand six hundred ninety-two references. With the help of bibliometric software like RStudio and VOSviewer, trends in academic research, evolution in themes, keyword clustering, and co-citation network were analysed. As per the study, there was a trend in shifting groundwater management from a resources-driven approach to a governance-driven one focused on sustainability. Some of the key issues identified in the paper include over-abstraction, poor irrigation practices, deteriorating water quality, weak law enforcement, and uncertainties arising from climate change. Research has established that legislation-based actions have a higher success rate than voluntary and technological efforts. The effectiveness of a policy is largely dependent on the strength of its legal framework, monitoring mechanisms, institutional coordination, stakeholder involvement, and consistency with agricultural and energy policies, while failures in policy implementation have been attributed to a lack of strong enforcement mechanisms, poor governance, conflicting subsidies, and political challenges. Some areas where further research could be focused include the behaviour of farmers, climate adaptation in evaluating the performance of policies, integration of groundwater policies with agricultural and energy policies, and impact assessment on small-scale farmers.