DEVELOPMENT: Brazil’s Water Law Makes Farmers Uneasy

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 25 1998 (IPS) - Brazil’s one-year-old “water law,” which established rates of payment for the public commodity, is causing unease among rural communities.

The law has yet to go into full effect, but farmers in the state of Sao Paulo, for example, fear that water costs will undermine their ability to compete to the point of making their farms commercially unviable. Water is particularly important to the sugar industry, which is concentrated in the interior of Sao Paulo.

The law, approved amid a growing shortage of water resources in several regions of the country, establishes the fact that users must pay and implements new administrative efforts to this end.

Under the government’s plans, every river basin will have its own Committee to decide how water resources will be used and to implement conservation and recuperation efforts. These will serve as “parliaments” where mayors and other municipal authorities from state and national governments will have a say, along with users and other representatives.

This administrative structure does not coincide with the political divisions of the country. River basins pass through many municipalities and some go through several states. For the most part, rivers act as the borders between such territorial units.

The Basin Committee represents a new seat of power that, albeit limited on issues concerning the environment, will be able to participate in the formulation of development policies by fixing prices and determining whether or to a company may utilize local water resources. This grants the institution power over municipal and provincial governments.

This is what concerns the farmers of Sao Paulo and others.

By decentralizing the administration of hydrographic basins, the new law is promoting “a revolution in the country’s environmental initiatives,” according to Minister of the Environment Gustavo Krause.

At the national level, a National Council of Water Resources, directed by the Minister of the Environment and with representatives from 14 other ministries, will decide on concerns and conflicts related to water, thus formalizing the administrative changes.

Until now, water was mainly an energy issue in Brazil, a country where most of the electricity consumed comes from rivers. The National Department of Water and Electric Energy was played the dominant role.

This was the product of a time where water shortages were unimaginable – with the exception of the northeast of the country which suffered periodic and prolonged droughts.

Eight percent of the world’s “sweet” water is in Brazil. But it is a resource that is as poorly distributed as income. Seventy percent is concentrated in the Amazon basin, where only seven percent of the population resides.

In the Sao Paulo metropolitan area, which is home to more than 16 million people – 10 percent of the country’s population – surface water can supply 82,000 liters per second. According to the Secretary of Water Resources of the state, Hugo Marques de Rosa, water consumption in Sao Paulo is currently at 60,000 liters per second, and should reach 75,000 liters by the year 2000 and 92,000 by the year 2010.

A consumption of 20 percent of potential output already indicates a shortage. According to this, Sao Paulo is on the brink of collapse. This is already being felt by the local population, who is frequently submitted to water rationing.

The situation is not much better in the interior of the state, in the areas into which industry is expanding. For this reason, the state government is quickly pushing through legislation, placing controls on water use starting in the year 2000 and organizing the enforcement of these regulations.

Twenty basin committees have already been formed and face the task of evaluating local problems and elaborating plans for stream recuperation, whose costs will be covered by the payments of users. This model is based on the one implemented in France, which has been charging for the use of water for 30 years.

The strongest resistance to paying for a resource that has always been considered to be a gift of nature is coming from farmers. Secretary Marques Rosa is offering to postpone payments until the year 2004, to avoid price increases in basic foodstuffs.

Ceara, in the northeast, was the first of the 26 Brazilian states to grant water concessions and implement payments for its use. Water has always been scarce in this area. Wilson Pinto, a spokesman for the local Secretariat of Water Resources, stated that two basin committees have been formed in the region.

In his opinion, the central conflict generated by the implementation of the new law is with large landowners, on whose properties the government built numerous dams to deal with droughts. “They want to own a public resource, built with public funds,” he explained.

The new policy will require efforts to prevent the wasting to which the population is accustomed, particularly in the big cities with insufficient natural water sources like Sao Paulo.

Each resident of that city uses an average of 200 liters of water per day, according to the Company of Basic Drainage of that state. The World Health Organization estimates that 40 liters of water per person per day are sufficient. (FIN-IPS-mo-ag-en-mg-mk-98)