Osnir da Silva Rubez prepares the furrows that will take water from the São Francisco river to irrigate his crops in the Brazilian Semi-arid ecoregion. He refuses to join the local drip or micro-sprinkler irrigation system, which is more efficient in water use, fertilisation and soil protection. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
JUAZEIRO, Brazil , Jun 12 2024 (IPS)

Osmir da Silva Rubez refuses to join the drip system, and is the only one among the 51 families living in the Mandacaru Public Irrigation Project in Juazeiro, a municipality in the state of Bahia, in the Northeast region of Brazil, to maintain the furrows that carry water to their crops.

The São Francisco River, which rises in the state of Minas Gerais, near the centre of Brazil, and flows northeast, has boosted irrigated agriculture in its 2,863 kilometres, much of it in semi-arid territory, with rainfall averaging between 200 and 800 millimetres per year.

It is a privileged basin, located in a region that suffers from water scarcity, especially in the increasingly recurrent droughts, when small rivers and streams dry up.

Water availability, immense due to the river’s large flow, was increased by the construction of two hydroelectric dams North and South of Juazeiro, a city of 238,000 people, which has developed a fruit-growing industry, mainly for export.

Mangoes and grapes are the main local crops, grown on large private farms and in the irrigation projects of the state-owned São Francisco and Parnaíba Valley Development Company (Codevasf). Export activity highlights the contrasts and inequalities of the so-called Semi-arid ecoregion.

Drip irrigation hoses on an Agrodan farm on an island in the São Francisco River, in Brazil’s arid Northeast. The company claims to be the country’s largest mango producer and exporter. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Flood irrigation

“The ditches that were initially used for irrigation are wasteful in their use of water. Drip irrigation is mostly used nowadays, since it uses only the necessary water, is monitored by computers and measures of soil humidity,” explained Humberto Miranda, chair of the Bahia Federation of Agriculture.

“Before, only 30 per cent of the water was used, today more than 90 per cent is used, which means that little is lost,” he said during an IPS tour of various localities in Juazeiro to visit farms and organisations involved in the irrigation project.

In Mandacaru, the system that enabled the switch to drip irrigation, with ponds and pumping, was implemented in 2011, explained Manoel Vicente dos Santos, one of the first settlers in the project launched in 1973. “Irrigation by furrows was unstable, bringing more water to one plant than to others, a waste,” he recalled.

But Rubez resists the change. In addition to the investment required in pumps and hoses, the drip system uses a lot of electricity, about 1,000 reais (200 dollars) a month. “And I have no heirs to leave the system to,” the 60-year-old single man joked with IPS.

Suemi Koshiyama, a Japanese immigrant who became a large producer of grapes and mangoes in the São Francisco river valley, in arid lands in the municipality of Juazeiro, in northeastern Brazil, shows the hose that irrigates his vineyard, drip-fed from above and not on the ground. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

The drip system is a step forward in these irrigation projects. Apart from saving water, it improves soil management, reducing erosion and controlling chemical fertilisation by directing it to the roots through the water, says José Moacir dos Santos, general coordinator of the non-governmental Regional Institute for Appropriate Small Farming (Irpaa).

But irrigation projects, whether Codevasf or private, do not favour local development, concentrate income, nor offer seasonal jobs during harvests, and they promote inequality, Dos Santos criticised.

Prosperity for the few

The wealth amassed by export fruit farming stays in the hands of a few, but creates a perception of prosperity that attracts many poor people to Juazeiro and neighbouring Petrolina, a city of 387,000 people separated by the São Francisco river and linked by a bridge.

Migration to these two fruit-growing capitals of the Brazilian Northeast “swells their populations, especially their poor and infrastructure-poor peripheries, while emptying nearby cities,” said the activist, son of Manoel Vicente, one of the project’s settlers.

In his opinion, an “injustice” has been done, because the river supplies the fruit-growing industry that exports its water contained in the fruit to Europe, the United States and Japan. But it does not do the same for the entire riverside population, which also has to resort to other, more distant springs.

Water pumping station from the São Francisco river to irrigate fruit farming at a project near Juazeiro, a production and export hub for fruit, especially mangoes and grapes, in Brazil’s arid northeast. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

In addition, most of the farmers have no irrigation. Communities encouraged by the government many years ago and traditional farmers in the basin have no access to water from the river, nor to the financing or other public project perks.

The dominant monoculture of fruit trees forces food imports. Juazeiro and Petrolina, with a combined population of 625,000, produce less food for local consumption than Campo Alegre de Lourdes, a municipality 350 kilometres away with only 31,000 inhabitants, compared Dos Santos, an agricultural technician.

The flow of goods, with fruits leaving and other products arriving from various parts of Brazil, has transformed the Juazeiro Producer Market into Brazil’s second largest agricultural trade hub, surpassed only by São Paulo, a metropolis of 12 million inhabitants – 22 million if its large metropolitan area is added.

“The fruit-growing hub is an artificial system that concentrates the best soils and water of São Francisco on islands and generates the illusion of growth in Greater Juazeiro and Petrolina, where only 5 per cent of the land is suitable for irrigation, with water for only 2 per cent,” said Roberto Malvezzi, an activist with the Catholic Pastoral Land Commission.

Maciela de Oliveira Silva in the shop where she sells products from the Mossoroca and Region Family Farming Cooperative, such as sweets, jellies and liqueurs made from native fruits from the so-called “grassland fund”, a collective area where farmers extract fruit, produce honey and raise goats and sheep. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Suitable alternatives

For Malvezzi, who has a degree in philosophy and theology, the Semi-arid region’s main economic and productive vocation is small livestock, such as goats and sheep, rather than agriculture.

A mistake that has cost it multiple crises and impoverishment, as well as the environmental destruction of the Semi-arid region, was the historical expansion of cattle in Northeastern Brazil, whose interior is mostly semi-arid.

The industrial and commercial chain for goats should be developed, including slaughterhouses and services such as technical assistance and health surveillance, said Malvezzi, who was born in the state of São Paulo, studied philosophy and theology there, but lives in the Northeast since 1979.

The Semi-arid is a region of family farming, and for nearly three decades has seen a transformation process seeking to adapt its development to local conditions, including the climate. “Living with the Semi-arid”, which means rejecting colonial influences and impositions of the past, is the goal.

Main canal supplying an irrigation project with water from the São Francisco river in the Semi-arid region. Secondary canals and local pumps in the fruit orchards complete the system that replaced irrigation by flood furrows, practically abolished because of the waste of water. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Small animal husbandry, instead of water-intensive cattle farming, and rainwater harvesting, both for human and animal consumption and for agricultural production, are some of the proven and effective ways.

In the state of Bahia, a traditional agrarian singularity has been institutionalised, the “grassland fund”, a large collective land, managed for the extraction of native products, such as fruits, and the raising of goats and sheep. Horticulture is expanding strongly throughout the Semi-arid region.

The Family Agricultural Cooperative of Massaroca and Region (Coofama), in the municipality of Juazeiro, is an example of a grassland fund, whose jellies, liqueurs and other native fruit products, such as umbu, and honey, are sold on the nearby highway and in cities.

‘Quiosco da Umbuzada’ is the name given to the roadside shop in the village of Massaroca, and ‘Central da Caatinga’, a shop in the city of Juazeiro, sell the products of Coofama and other family farming cooperatives.

“Goats survive better in prolonged droughts, they eat leaves even from tall trees,” Coofama farmer Maciela de Oliveira Silva, who runs the roadside shop, where she works from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on a minimum wage, equal to 280 dollars, told IPS.

Eggs are another viable and promising food production in the Semi-arid, according to the Association of Small Producers of Canoa and Oliveira, led by Gilmar Nogueira Lino, owner of some 1,000 hens, also in the south of Juazeiro.

The association’s 60 families produced 17,444 dozen eggs in 2023, said Lino. “The hens are faster than goats, start providing income in a few months and don’t require large spaces,” he told IPS.

On his half-hectare property, the farmer has chicken coops and a shop that sells food, drinks and cooking gas. He also donated the land for the association’s headquarters. He only had to overcome the prejudice that “raising chickens is a woman’s business.”

María José Valenzuela, Director of the Environment of the Chilean municipality of María Pinto, stands next to Mario Rojas, caretaker of the Miyawaki project, a pilot experience of this technique that works with little water and only requires irrigation for the first two years. A native forest has been created that improves the biodiversity of the area, in a municipality that defines itself as sustainable. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Oct 30 2023 (IPS)

A return to nature is the main solution being promoted by communities and municipalities to avoid the water shortage that threatens to leave Santiago, the capital of Chile, home to more than 40 percent of the 19.5 million inhabitants of this South American country, without water.

The water supply in Greater Santiago depends on the Maipo River, whose waters run for some 250 kilometers from the Andes Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, near the port of San Antonio, some 130 kilometers north of Santiago."We must move towards greener or nature-based solutions in the conservation, restoration and protection of ecosystems involved in the water cycle. Wetlands, swamps, headwaters forests, native trees. This generates a greater impact in terms of water supply, in less time and at a lower cost. " -- Gerardo Díaz

In the Andes mountains, the Volcán, Yeso and Colorado rivers are tributaries of the Maipo River. The Maipo ranks ninth among the 18 most water-stressed rivers in the world and is the only South American river in this ranking.

Chile is experiencing an unprecedented drought that has dragged on for 15 years, caused by climate change and other phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña.

This year 2023 there was more rainfall. The Maipo even flooded and caused turbidity in the water and all the outlying districts were threatened with a total lack of supply for three days. But the authorities warn that the drought is not over and are preparing contingency plans to cope with its increasing effects now that the southern hemisphere summer is approaching.

Of the groundwater wells measured in Santiago and its surrounding region, 72 percent show a significant decline because extraction exceeds the natural recharge capacity.

In the basin, the current water gap – the difference between available water supply and demand – is 63.5 cubic meters per second. But by 2050, the water gap will be 92.1 cubic meters per second, if demand does not increase.

This water stress is caused by the high summer temperatures and rainfall that is scarce and concentrated in a short period of the winter, which has been happening since the onset of the current drought in 2008.

Gerardo Díaz of the Chile Foundation mans a stand set up at the Mapocho Station Cultural Center in Santiago, during a public event to educate and raise awareness about the need to take care of household water. Banners explain the water crisis and illustrate ways to deal with it. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

According to Water Scenarios 2030, an innovative initiative promoted by the Chile Foundation, in a collaborative effort with different stakeholders, water efficiency would contribute 73 percent of water within the set of solutions for this basin, while the conservation and protection of its ecosystems would contribute 18 percent.

The incorporation of new water sources would contribute nine percent to the solution, but requires an excessively high investment, says the study led by the Chile Foundation, a public-private organization dedicated to working for sustainable development.

These studies indicate that in the basin there are 35 percent more groundwater rights granted than the natural recharge capacity of the aquifer. This overexploitation has repercussions on the availability of groundwater in the present and the future.

Gerardo Díaz, head of projects at the Chile Foundation’s sustainability department, told IPS that no solution has been ruled out, but said “we are focusing on looking at how nature and strengthening natural water systems can help us resolve the crisis we are in.”

IPS visited several localities in Greater Santiago, which is made up of 52 municipalities, to observe some nature-based solutions and the water improvement they bring.

Fabian Guerrero, director of the San Mateo Park in the Chilean municipality of Curacaví, walks through the 14-hectare open space in the center of town that was once a garbage dump where the trees have signs identifying their species and the trails are marked for visitors. Five compost bins operate on site to receive organic matter that is turned into compost to nourish the gardens, trees and seedlings. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Miyawaki technique to grow trees in rural municipality María Pinto

In the rural municipality of María Pinto, with a population of 14,000 people, located 40 kilometers from the center of Santiago, a technique created by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, which accelerates the growth of native forests by up to 10 times, was successfully implemented for the first time in Chile. Trees are planted at low density in soil fertilized with nutrients.

It is a method of ecological restoration based on the potential natural vegetation of a given area, reproducing in an accelerated manner the landscape that would exist if there had been no human presence and turning it into a refuge for native biodiversity and its many different forms of life.

“We are carrying out an ecological restoration of the hillside to replace a 40-year-old radiata pine plantation that dried out due to a plague,” María José Valenzuela, the municipality’s environmental director, told IPS.

The restoration was carried out on one of the seven hectares of the San Pedro Sports Field and involved numerous volunteers from the Liceo Polivalente, a municipal high school, who called themselves Forjadores Ambientales (roughly, environmental creators).

Forests generate conditions for greater water infiltration for the trees, which are also fog trappers. And they help to prevent rainwater from running off quickly and to infiltrate the soil instead.

“Global warming is manifesting with more fog and that is something that is noticeable,” Valenzuela explained.

Campo San Pedro also points to a problem with the hillsides in the center of this long narrow country, which arises from monoculture farming.

The Miyawaki lot now has 3500 trees of 10 native species on 500 square meters.

It functions as a laboratory of sclerophyllous forest, typical of Chile, where the Miyawaki technique provides an example for recovery of the remaining forests in central Chile. This kind of forest is characterized by species with hard evergreen leaves that enable them to withstand droughts.

“Many monoculture farms after exploiting the wells leave hills converted into deserts, with infertile soil due to so many agrochemicals and all the times they were plowed and not covered,” explained Valenzuela, a civil engineer specializing in sustainability and social ecology.

She was alluding to the repeated abandonment of hillsides in central Chile that are dedicated to monoculture, mainly avocado and fruit trees, and then deserted when they become wastelands due to lack of water.

In Chile, agriculture accounts for more than 60 percent of water consumption, in a country with a dynamic agro-export sector that expanded with few controls.

And as in most of Chile’s rural areas, the municipality is full of “loteos”, the name given locally to divisions of land without infrastructure services or regulatory plans. Added to this are the sale of water rights and the excessive use of water by digging irregular wells to fill swimming pools or maintain lawns.

In this country, water has been largely privatized after water rights were separated from land tenure during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). This resulted in water rights being traded on the market as a commodity, restricting public access to water.

Nearly 40 percent of Chile’s population lives in the Maipo River basin, because it is home to Greater Santiago and its 52 municipalities. A new study warns that it is under maximum pressure, while the inhabitants have little awareness about the stress of their drinking water supply. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Ecological recovery in Curacaví

In the rural municipality of Curacaví, 53 kilometers from downtown Santiago and home to 33,000 inhabitants, the community mobilized in 2018 to recover 14 hectares of hillside that had turned into an open-air landfill.

Alarmed by a fire, in January of that year local residents removed 50 tons of garbage and organized themselves in the San Mateo Park to reforest and plant, to date, 5,000 native trees.

Fabian Guerrero, general director of the park, told IPS that the municipal government provides them with 40,000 liters of water per week. It also supplies machines to remove the soil, and to use guano (the excrement of seabirds) and organic matter to prepare a Miyawaki forest with native species planted at high density in a small space.

“We have drip and sprinkler irrigation techniques to use water efficiently. In the park there are organic vegetable gardens, compost bins, trails and guided tours for students and families, to whom we teach how and which trees to plant, in which location, which one gives more shade or withstands more sunshine,” he told IPS.

The community won seven reforestation projects and their dream is two other initiatives: to have their own water, with a dam or pond, and to create a nursery with all kinds of trees, medicinal plants, vegetables and flowers.

“We plan to create a green lung so that people see this place as a space for family recreation, connected to nature, a place to come and reflect and learn about trees. We aim for education and for people to learn to take care of the trees,” said Guerrero, a computer programmer who describes himself as a “passionate organic farmer and nature lover.”

Local residents can plant and harvest in the organic community vegetable gardens, and they can also sponsor trees.

On Las Industrias Avenue, in the south of the Chilean municipality of San Joaquín, a section of the Permeable Pavement project was built, consisting of concrete in a grid pattern that allows water to drain and infiltrate the soil. The project was tested in a sloped bike path area where water can be captured to go directly into the soil. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

Water supply initiatives in San Joaquín

The municipality of San Joaquín, population 94,000 located 12 kilometers southwest of the capital, is one of the poorest in the Greater Santiago area.

It is promoting water projects and protecting two parks and will create a third, called the Victor Jara Flood Park, which will be ready by 2025.

“It is the bank of the Zanjón de la Aguada, a canal that is very problematic for Santiago because it received industrial runoff and stank,” said environmental engineer Claudia Silva, in charge of environmental management and control for San Joaquín.

The Flood Park has underground sections and is designed so that, in case of heavy rainfall, it can receive and contain the water. It includes plans for a swimming pool and vegetation on its banks capable of withstanding a flood.

A Rain Garden was created in Mataveri, a street that flooded every time in rained. It consisted of removing cement structures to channel water to plants grown there. And Permeable Pavement, with a reticular pattern, was installed in a bicycle lane to capture water that previously drained into the sewer and thus facilitate its infiltration into the ground.

The Victor Jara Flood Park, to be completed in 2025, covers the municipalities of San Miguel, San Joaquín and Pedro Aguirre Cerda and is promoted by the government of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago. It has underground sections and is designed with plants suitable for areas with heavy water runoff. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi / IPS

The Water Scenarios 2030 study found that another cause of the water crisis is the dispersal of the governance process, with more than 52 institutions at the national level involved in water management.

Díaz also criticized the fact that the measures adopted are heavily oriented towards new sources of water through desalination or accumulation in reservoirs.

“Our view is that we must move towards greener or nature-based solutions in the conservation, restoration and protection of ecosystems involved in the water cycle. Wetlands, swamps, headwaters forests, native trees. This generates a greater impact in terms of water supply, in less time and at a lower cost,” he said.

According to the Chile Foundation expert, the first step is to implement solutions based on nature and then move forward in demand management to reduce water consumption through greater efficiency in agriculture and irrigation of green areas, among other aspects.

“And finally, we must move towards new sources such as the use of treated wastewater or desalination to close the water gap. But nature-based solutions and demand management should address more than 50 percent of the territorial gap in the basins analyzed,” he asserted.

Tank trucks being filled with water in front of Osman Bin Affan Mosque in Beirut. Credit: Oriol Andrés Gallart/IPS

By Oriol Andrés Gallart
BEIRUT, Jul 28 2014 (IPS)

In front of Osman Bin Affan Mosque, in a central but narrow street of Beirut, several tank trucks are being filled with large amounts of water. The mosque has its own well, which allows it to pump water directly from the aquifers that cross the Lebanese underground. Once filled, the trucks will start going through the city to supply hundreds of homes and shops.

In a normal year, the water trucks do not appear until September, but this year they have started working even before summer because of the severe drought currently affecting Lebanon.

This comes on top of the increased pressure on the existing water supply due to the presence of more than one million Syrian refugees fleeing the war, exacerbating a situation which may lead to food insecurity and public health problems.“The more we deplete our groundwater reserves, the less we can rely on them in the coming season. If next year we have below average rainfalls, the water conditions will be much worse than today” – Nadim Farajalla of the Issam Fares Institute (IFI)

Rains were scarce last winter. While the annual average in recent decades was above 800 mm, this year it was around 400 mm, making it one of the worst rainfall seasons in the last sixty years.

The paradox is that Lebanon should not suffer from water scarcity. Annual precipitation is about 8,600 million cubic metres while normal water demand ranges between 1,473 and 1,530 million cubic metres per year, according to the Impact of Population Growth and Climate Change on Water Scarcity, Agricultural Output and Food Security report published  in April by the Issam Fares Institute (IFI) at the American University of Beirut.

However, as Nadim Farajalla, Research Director of IFI’s Climate Change and Environment in the Arab World Programme, explains, the country’s inability to store water efficiently, water pollution and its misuse both in agriculture and for domestic purposes, have put great pressure on the resource.

According to Bruno Minjauw, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative ad interim in the country as well as Resilience Officer, Lebanon “has always been a very wet country. Therefore, the production system has never looked so much at the problem of water.”

Referring to the figures for rainfall, Minjauw says that “what we are seeing is definitely an issue of climate change. Over the years, drought or seasons of scarcity have become more frequent”. In his opinion, the current drought must be taken as a warning: “It is time to manage water in a better way.”

However, he continues, “the good news is that this country is not exploiting its full potential in terms of sustainable water consumption, so there’s plenty of room for improvement.”

Meanwhile, water has become an issue, with scarcity hitting particularly hard the agricultural sector, which accounts for 60 percent of the water consumed despite the sector’s limited impact on the Lebanese economy (agriculture contributed to 5.9% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2011).

“Some municipalities are limiting what farmers can plant,” explains Gabriel Bayram, an agricultural advisor with KDS, a local development consultancy.

Minjauw believes that there is a real danger “in terms of food insecurity because we have more people [like refugees] coming while production is diminishing.” Nevertheless, he points out that the current crisis has increased the interest of government and farmers in “increase the quantity of land using improved irrigation systems, such as the drip irrigation system, which consume much less water.” Drip irrigation saves water – and fertiliser – by allowing water to drip slowly through a network of  tubes that deliver water directly to the base of the plant.

FAO is also working to promote the newest technologies in agriculture within the framework of a 4-year plan to improve food security and stabilise rural livelihoods in Lebanon.

Sheik Osama Chehab, in charge of the Osman Bin Affan Mosque, explains that, 20 years ago, water could be found three metres under the ground surface. “Yesterday,” he told IPS, “we dug 120 metres and did not find a drop.”

Digging wells has long been the main alternative to insufficient public water supplies in Lebanon and, according to the National Water Sector Strategy, there are about 42,000 wells throughout the country, half of which are unlicensed.

However, notes Farajalla “this has led to a drop in the water table and along the coast most [aquifers] are experiencing sea water intrusion, thus contaminating these aquifers for generations to come. The more we deplete our groundwater reserves, the less we can rely on them in the coming season. If next year we have below average rainfalls, the water conditions will be much worse than today.”

Besides, he cautions, “most of these wells have not passed quality tests. Therefore there are also risks that water use could trigger diseases among the population.”

The drought is also exacerbating tensions between host communities and Syrian refugees.

The rural municipality of Barouk, for example, whose springs and river supply water to big areas in Lebanon, today can count on only 30 percent of the usual quantity of water available. However, consumption needs have risen by around 25 percent as a result of the presence of 2,000 refugees and Barouk’s deputy mayor Dr. Marwan Mahmoud explains that this has generated complaints against newcomers.

However, Minjauw believes that “within that worrisome context, there is the possibility to mitigate the conflict and turn it into a win-win situation, employing both host and refugee communities in building long-term solutions for water management and conservation as well as forest maintenance and management. This would be beneficial for Lebanese farmers in the long term while enhancing the livelihoods of suffering people.”

For Farajalla, part of the problem related to water is that “there is a general lack of awareness and knowledge among decision-makers” in Lebanon, and he argues that it is up to civil society to lead the process, pressuring the government for “more transparency and better governance and accountability” in water management.

He claims that “the government failed with this drought by not looking at it earlier.” So far, a cabinet in continuous political crisis has promoted few and ineffective measures to alleviate the drought. One of the most recent ideas was to import water from Turkey, with prohibitive costs.

“Soon, you will also hear about projects to desalinate sea water,” says Farajalla. “Both ideas are silly because in Lebanon we can improve a lot of things before resorting to these drastic measures.”