Development & Aid, Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean, Poverty & SDGs, Water & Sanitation

BRAZIL: Sanitation a Reality on Paper Only

Clarinha Glock* - IPS/IFEJ

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Nov 23 2007 (IPS) - The main sanitation plan for the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul is 12 years old, has survived four state governments and carries a price tag of 220 million dollars – but has yet to be implemented.

Since it got underway in 1995, the Ecologically Sustainable and Socially Just Development Programme for the Guaíba Hydrographic Region (Pro-Guaíba), has been passed from the State Planning Secretariat to the Environment Ministry and lost financing from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

“The utopia was the transition from an exclusive model to one that would involve all of society,” says economist André Luis Baptista, an environmental planning consultant who worked on the programme from 1998 to 2002.

“The big stride forward was to understand that it was not enough to have a sanitary landfill, but rather that we needed to reduce waste and the volume of sewage, adjust industrial production and advance towards agro-ecology,” according to Renato Saraiva Ferreira, who served as Pro-Guaíba’s executive secretary between 1999 and 2003.

It was a model project for environmental management: it would cover 251 municipalities with a total of more than six million people, 83.5 percent in urban zones and 16.5 percent rural, many without any type of sewage services.

The affected area, extending across 84,700 square kilometres, includes nine watersheds where more than 70 percent of the state’s gross domestic product is generated.

The plan had several modules. The first included sewage treatment facilities, processing of solid waste, incentives for eco-friendly farming, reforestation efforts, environmental education, and water and air quality controls.

The priorities of the subsequent module were to emerge from guidelines resulting from meeting with communities and technicians. If resources had been available, it would have included two more phases.

But it only received IDB funds for the first module. Between October 1993 and July 2002, some 220 million dollars were invested, of which the regional multilateral bank provided 60 percent and the rest was up to the state.

That phase was to be completed in four or five years, but it took 10. In debt, the state government under Governor Germano Rigotto (2003-2007) was not able to negotiate new funds for the following stages. His successor, Yeda Crusius, decided to pick up operations with Rio Grande do Sul’s own resources.

Emphasis was put on the metropolitan area of Porto Alegre, the state capital, and on the urban area of the northeast, where Caxias do Sul is located, with a high concentration of industries.

The funding cuts and the paralysis of the programme had serious consequences. Every year the scene is repeated of tonnes of dead fish in Rio dos Sinos, a river that begins in Serra do Mar and runs 195 km until it flows across 32 municipalities into the Jacuí River.

Ferreira, now manager of the Environment Ministry’s department of watershed revitalisation, warns that each day the industries dump their waste and people consume contaminated waters, leading to more disease.

Sewage water and industrial waste contaminate the river, especially the stretch between Esteio and Sapucaia do Sul. Its clean-up was to be part of Pro-Guaíba’s second module.

“The major problem is the lack of domestic sanitation. We are years behind in investment, so the fact that the fish are dying doesn’t surprise anyone,” says architect Viviane Nabinger, head of the Sinos Committee.

Now it is up to the mayors and institutions to find funds and carry forward the proposals in the original guidelines. That is what the city government of Porto Alegre did, negotiating a budget with an international bank for treating the sewage going into Lake Guaíba.

Not everything is at a standstill.

“The 700,000 reais (about 400,000 dollars) voted by the Regional Development Councils in public consultation at the end of the last government’s term will be used to develop the area around the Jacuí delta,” a series of 16 islands, canals and marshes formed at the confluence of the Gravataí, Sinos, Caí and Jacuí rivers, according to Pro-Guaíba’s current chief, Ana Elizabeth Carara.

The hydrodynamic model of water quality and quantity of Lake Guaíba was created in an agreement with the Japan International Cooperation Agency. Also, sanitation works plans were sent off to the Housing Secretariat in hopes of obtaining funding from the federal government’s Accelerated Growth Programme.

Pro-Guaíba currently has an annual budget of 86,000 dollars, says Carara. But she does not say it has stalled. “There already exist watershed committees, and we are finalising the state water resources plan. What is missing is charging for water use and creating a state water agency,” she says.

Although fees are already charged for sewage treatment and water services, a tax for specific uses would be applied that, according to Carara, is already in place in other states. The money collected would be earmarked for subsidising municipal water projects.

It is a long-standing demand. “We finished the guidelines with 39 actions in the nine watersheds of Guaíba, and they were the flagships. And there were dozens of smaller and complementary projects, designed based on a public appeal,” recalls Arno Kayser, of the non-governmental Roessler Environmental Defence Movement.

Kayser represented the civil society organisations on the deliberative council of Pro-Guaíba and participated in the group in charge of drawing up the main guidelines.

But that council no longer meets.

Pro-Guaíba is one of several frustrations, like the Decontamination Programme of Guanabara Bay, in the tourism-focused city of Rio de Janeiro, also begun in 1995, with a budget of 793 million dollars financed by the IDB and Japan, and which was to be completed in 1999, but still has many projects pending amid charges of inefficiency.

Nor did Pro-Guaíba escape political disputes. The depreciation of the dollar, the changes in government and the leadership of the Environment Ministry – four different people in the last administration – all contributed to undermining it.

It could have been worse if not for the audits conducted by the IDB, which meant additional monitoring of the money. The bank is currently auditing the accounts of the last phase of the first module.

“We know that the state continues to implement actions in the Guaíba watershed and that it would like to finance a new phase with the bank, but no study has been done in this respect,” says IDB urban development expert in Brazil, Cláudia Nery.

(*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS-Inter Press Service and IFEJ-International Federation of Environmental Journalists.)