ABSTRACT
Abstract Ethiopia, Yemen and Palestine are two countries and a nascent state that face different challenges concerning access to groundwater. Common problems range from groundwater depletion caused by excessive pumping, a lack of information on groundwater resources, and obstruction of access and the denial of water rights by other parties. These challenges may appear unrelated at first glance, but they are in fact linked by the importance of the political arena in removing barriers and furthering development. This chapter presents the Groundwater in the Political Domain research project and analyses the functioning of the ‘political black box’ with regard to groundwater governance in these three country settings. The authors argue that the role of politics is crucial, but differs also because of the nature of the state. Palestine and Yemen can best be characterised as fragile states, while Ethiopia is a democratic state in development with elements of an autocratic state. An enabling environment, triggered by progress in politics, institutions, or the socio-economic domain, is suggested to help actors develop themselves and the resource. Another lesson from the analysis is to allow the narrative of the cases to take into account the interaction between the resource, the different users and the researchers.
