Objective 15:
To
Preserve the quantity and improve the Quality of Water in the
Hydrographic Basins
Brazil has, in its territory, over 15% of the river
water in liquid form in the world, but its distribution is quite
unbalanced: the Northeast suffers with desertification whereas the
Amazon is crossed by an indefinite number of rivers. Many of those,
however, have already been compromised by the human action. In the
“Pantanal” (swamp area), the rivers are threatened by inadequate
agricultural practices. In the same way, the “São Francisco” river,
which bathes an extensively poor, lacking water region, has been
suffering reduction of its water availability which aggravates the
conflicts of its use, in special between the irrigation and
hydroelectric sectors. In the Southeast region, the “Tietê” is a model
of neglect with the sweet waters and the “Paraíba do Sul” river claims
for revitalisation actions.
In order to face all these problems, we have
available to us the “Water Resources Law” no. 9.433, approved in 1997,
and a “Waters National Agency”(ANA). The new model requires that actions
in each basin be defined participatively by means of a committee and its
agency, in charge of managing the system as a whole, thus reducing
conflicts, duly charging and establishing corrective policies to issues
considered a priority. To make the population participate in the fate of
the rivers next to them and adopt them as a good to be protected and
endow the Committee with a representative body, those are some of the
main challenges which await to be faced in the next decade.
To adopt a follow up system for the “National Policy
of Water Resources Management” through the “Sustainable Development of
Hydrographic Basins and Sub-Basins Indicators”, as well as to apply
“granting” and “charging” instruments for the use of water, especially
with economic use purposes, is a measure which shall signal society to
the necessary rationalisation of its use.
This does not mean that we are proposing the
“privatisation of the use of water” since the “Basin Committee” can and
should facilitate its access, which today gives maximum priority to
drinking water and the quenching of animals’ thirst. But it is also
taken into consideration that, as water is a scarce and strategic
resource as well as an economic good of great value, its use for
agricultural or industrial activities, especially the sizeable ones like
irrigation, should be accounted for as cost in order to stimulate the
treatment of residues or to allow for its replacement.
In the rural areas, pesticides and fertilizers
constitute a contamination factor as much of the water as of the soil as
they are dragged by rivers or reach the underground waters by
infiltration.
In the urban centres, the river banks suffer
irregular occupation and are mostly taken with garbage deposits which,
besides pollution and illnesses, aggravate the effects of floods,
causing social and economic damages not only to the population directly
hit by the urban infra-structure, but to the economy as a whole, due to
the multiple negative effects.
The Atlantic Ocean is the main victim of the
Brazilian urbanisation in view of the enormous concentration of large
and small cities on the coastal area which canalise sewage and garbage
to the sea.
It is urgent to increase the quantity of available
water in some critical points of the Brazilian hydrographic basins,
protecting the springs and combating deforestation of gallery forests,
as well as irregular occupation which provokes the silting of the river
margins, especially in the dense populated areas or in those subject to
occupation with agricultural activities.
The combat to such problems depends, in large part,
to the establishment of adequate urban policies, once the majority of
the big Brazilian cities have grown unplanned. The effective application
of the “Water Resources Law” is recognised by the different social
segments, which participated in the National Survey for the Brazilian
Agenda 21 as an adequate instrument to face the above-referred problems.
Actions and Recommendations
 | To divulge the awareness that water is a limited good which is
especially badly distributed in our country, but which occurs in large
abundance in the unpopulated Amazon region and is very scarce in the
semi-dry Northeastern region. |
| To implement the “National Policy for Water Resources Management”,
by establishing, in a priority and exemplary manner, the Committees
and Hydrographic Basins Agencies for the “Paraíba do Sul, São
Francisco, Paraná – Tietê and Araguaia-Tocantins” rivers in the next
five years. |
| To channel a big environmental education programme in the
Northeast by mobilising big producers, public companies, local
governments and communities, especially the ones living in the margins
in critical points around the “São Francisco” river and developing in
the population the perception of a narrow relationship between
deforestation, loss of water and desertification. |
| To promote the environmental education, mainly of children and
youngsters, in the urban centres as far as the consequence of water
waste is concerned. Schools and the media are privileged partners in
the implementation of this action. |
| To ensure the preservation of springs through the plantation of
protective forests and to protect the river margins and the tops of
the Central Brazil plateaus through the recovery of their gallery
forest with absolute priority. |
| To implement a system of environmental management in the port
areas in a way to ensure its international competitiveness by
controlling residues, oil spill and by improving the quality of
services. |
| To promote the modernisation of river infra-structures of common
use and of irrigation associated to agro-business in the landmark of
sustainable development |
| To stimulate and facilitate, even financially when it is the case,
the adoption of agricultural practices and irrigation technologies of
low impact on the soil and on waters. |
| To develop and divulge technologies of re-utilisation of water for
industrial use even by giving it financial support when it is the
case. |
| In the urban centres, to prevent the illegal occupation of rivers
and lakes margins, what means, besides meeting the legislation
requirements, the development and the carrying out of housing policies
for the low income population. |
| To combat pollution of soil and water and monitor its effects over
the human environment in its most diversified modalities, especially
through dangerous residues, of high toxic levels and hazardous to the
natural resources and to human life. |
Objective 16
Forest Policy, Deforestation Control and Biodiversity Corridors
Brazil is the country of the largest biodiversity in the whole
planet and houses the greatest extension of continuous tropical forests.
Some figures express Brazil’s first position among the mega-biodiversity
countries: of the 24,400 species of vertebrates known 3 thousand, or 13%
of the total, live in our territory. The number of plants in our country
is estimated between 50 and 56 thousand, or 20% of the world total.
If we still do not know the potentiality of the
Amazon we will never know what was lost of the Atlantic Forest, which
covered around one million square kilometres along the coast, from the
South to the Northeast, and which is, today, reduced to less than 7% of
its original area. Even so, 1,800 vertebrates are represented in the
Atlantic Forest, of which 21% are endemic.
The Amazon, though still our less destructed bioma in
percentage terms, was deforested between 1978 and 1996 at the
unbelievable average of 52 square kilometres a day. Since then, this
average has been decreasing little by little. The objective being
proposed in this work is to reach the rate of deforestation zero in the
next 10 years, in the critical areas of threatened biomes. However, this
isn’t enough. It is necessary to promote reforestation, the
reconstitution of areas which have lost their original vegetation cover.
Brazil has achieved outstanding results in the
international scenario of biodiversity policies by adjusting and making
operational to the national reality the concept of “biodiversity
corridors”, which are continuous areas not only of preservation of
isolate species but also of preservation of processes of reproduction of
inter-dependant chains of living beings. “Mamirauá” is a remarkable
example of a well-succeeded conservation unity, encompassing today 5
million hectares.
It is, therefore, necessary to take measures which
guarantee a sustainable exploration of fauna and flora resources without
destroying the ecosystems. It is also indispensable that the necessity
of the populations living in areas meant to be protected be taken into
consideration. All and every initiative should have, as an objective,
the improvement of the quality of life of these populations which,
legitimately, long for their inclusion into the Brazilian society.
The priority actions for conservation should reflect
the actual situation of the biomass. In the Amazon and in the Pantanal,
this means the implementation of a system of sizeable conservation
unities, compatible with the high biodiversity and the extensive and low
impact human occupation character which is meant to be maintained. In
more densely populated areas and with significant degradation, like the
Atlantic Forest and the caatinga, all that is left should be preserved,
and actions to recover and interconnect the existing reservations, in
the form of biodiversity corridors, should be undertaken.
The savanna presents a large heterogeneity of
antropic occupation and wealth comparable to the Amazon thus justifying
the creation and consolidation of “corridors” as much as the
conservation of the last big intact areas.
The Atlantic Forest in particular, the objective of deforestation zero
and loss of biodiversity zero represent the best hope for survival of
the biomes.
The biodiversity corridors allow gathering in the
same landscape a set of interconnected protected areas, inserted in a
matrix of human occupation contemplating economic activities of all
kinds. They are forms of conciliating the human presence and the
conservation biodiversity in regional scales in the order of dozens of
thousands of square kilometres. In Brazil, five corridors are being
implemented in the Amazon, two in the Atlantic Forest, one in the
Cerrado and Pantanal, with others still being planning for the
transition “savanna-caatinga” and for the “São Francisco” valley.
Actions and Recommendations
Deforestation Control: More Subsidies and Credit Stimulus
|
To accomplish the transition from predatory forms to sustainable
ones to be put to the use of the Brazilian ecosystems, defining
appropriate management instruments for these areas and using
indicators to ensure the deforestation Zero targets in the Atlantic
Forest. The recovery of the Environmental Protection Areas and the
Permanent Protection Areas, giving priority to the biodiversity
corridors, is also essential.
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|
To radically limit the use of burnings as an instrument of soil
handling, in view of their highly negative impact on biodiversity,
long term soil fertility and human health.
|
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To stimulate the recovery of deforested and abandoned or underused
lands in the form of mosaics of natural biota areas and areas of
economic use compatible with the primitive vegetation cover.
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To strategically apply the technological resources available in a
way to maintain the integrity of the law protected areas such as the
permanent preservation ones, the legal reserves, the conservation
unities, the ecological corridors, as well as the existing fragments
of threatened biomass.
|
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To limit the concession of credits for the expansion of agricultural
borders in areas of environmental fragility, based on information
contained in economic ecological mapping and on integrally meeting
the current environmental legislation.
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To respect the environmental legislation in
its agrarian policies initiatives within Brazil, in both federal and
state spheres, aiming at meeting the basic requirements for
environmental licensing of undertakings, previously a concession of
property titles, thus guaranteeing the demarcation of a legal
reserve for the common use of those who have been settled, and the
maintenance of the integrity of permanent preservation areas.
|
Planted Forests: Increase in the Forest Products Offer
|
To ensure the control of offer and demand of forest products through
the mechanism of concession of sustained exploration of national
forests, by means of the elaboration of sustainable forest handling
plans, as a means to guarantee the supply of medium and long term
forest raw material for both the internal consumer market as well as
the timber export market.
|
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To strengthen the policy of utilisation of forest replacement
credits through incentives to the creation of reforestation
associations and through the improvement of control as far as
meeting the legal provisions is concerned.
|
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To develop mechanisms of access to credits and subsidies for the
recovery of degraded areas, by means of a recomposition of natural
biomass in rural properties.
|
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To support forest research, mainly as to the utilisation of native
forest species for reforestation.
|
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To support measures to improve the economic exploration of standing
forests, such as the development of eco-tourism, the extraction of
fruit and seeds, as well as the Brazilian participation in the
international policy of CO2 emission by means of the absorption of
dividends for carbon sequestration through the maintenance of
tropical forests.
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To promote a large campaign of recomposition and averbation of legal
reservation areas through the utilisation of compensation mechanisms
of one area for the other or through the regeneration of natural
explored areas with cattle raising farming activities.
|
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To stimulate the silvo-cultures (forest planting), in order to
guarantee the supply of timber from planted forests.
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Protection and Use of Biodiversity
|
To expand the public system of conservation unities in a way to
ensure the conservation of all the Brazilian biome species, by
applying the criteria of geographic, taxonomic and communities and
ecosystems representativeness and by prioritising the unities which
may give larger contributions to the biodiversity of the system as a
whole.
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To enable the maintenance of a biotechnology sector based on the
remuneration of biodiversity services, as much in the area of
technology and research as in the financing policies, according to
competitiveness, regional representativeness and national interests
criteria. The areas of pharmacy, natural medicine, perfumes and
cosmetics of high aggregated value should also be included, as well
as juices and foods, capable of guaranteeing employment and income
to the people.
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To support programmes of biodiversity scientific inventory in order
to subsidise the conservation decisions and allow the basis for
licensing and valorisation of biodiversity products.
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To attribute economic value to biodiversity by inlaying the cost of
natural goods depletion, which will enable to evaluate the
convenience and possibility of its sustainable exploration.
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To provide resources and capacitate personnel for the
biotechnological research, an area in which Brazil has already
conquered world recognition, in view of the economic utilisation of
fauna and flora products, as well as the utilisation of microbiotics.
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To establish planning mechanisms for sustainable landscapes which
may conciliate the formation of protected areas systems with areas
of economic use in regional matrices.
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To use indemnisation and environmental compensation resources for
the implementation of protected area systems which may preserve the
biome on a long term basis, instead of concentrating in emergency
mitigating actions.
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To institute norms and create systems of surveillance and control
which allow an effective combat to bio pirating.
|
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To guarantee that detectors of raw materials and/or knowledge, which
lead to the economical use of our biodiversity model, be duly
remunerated.
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To guarantee the presence of governmental action in determining the
legal procedures to a just and equal access, remittance and
distribution of the benefits stemming from the use of national
genetic resources through the Genetic Property Management Council.
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To revise the “official list of the Brazilian fauna and flora
species threatened with extinction” with views to establish
protection and plantation development mechanisms as well as breeding
areas for their recovery.
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Exemplary Actions in Threatened Biomass
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To implement programmes of biodiversity corridors in every biomass
with representatives from all the big bio-geographic subdivisions of
the regions.
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To educate the local populations making them aware of the importance
of preserving the biomass and, at the same time, to offer them
options for subsistence and opportunities to improve their quality
of life. To encourage the transition from extractable activities to
environmental services activities. To stimulate the local
communities to be the main beneficiaries of preservation activities.
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To incorporate the Amazon to the national community by preserving
its forest and by guaranteeing its sustainable development by
stimulating the plantation of forests and agricultural and timber
activities in degraded forest areas, with the help of financing from
regional banks.
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To speed up the elaboration, in a participative form, of the
economic ecological mapping which shall be adopted as a basic
instrument for any territorial planning action.
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To effectively integrate the Amazon to the remainder of Brazil by
enlarging and strengthening the number of research unities placed in
the Amazon, so that the knowledge may be generated and locally
applied and traditional knowledge may be absorbed in the process.
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To promote actions of reforestation in order to recover the “caatinga”,
and of replanting commercial species in order to reduce the pressure
over the native vegetation.
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To abolish from the semi-arid area the assistantship in the form of
emergency fronts by fostering investments in infrastructure in order
to make viable the sustainable development.
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To promote the handling of the “caatinga” in the semi-arid area in
order to avoid the formation of desertification nucleuses.
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To capacitate the rural man to make him able to live with the
drought by stimulating the use of technologies already proven and
divulged by research centres and non-governmental organisations with
experience in the handling of natural resources in semi-arid
regions.
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To combat the desertification in the North-eastern region by means
of a combat to poverty programme together with the valorisation of
technology and renewable energy as a substitute alternative to the
use of insufficient biomass caused by deforestation.
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To provide means and resources for the use of alternative energy
sources in a way to decrease the indiscriminate consumption of the
biomass which aggravates deforestation and accelerates the process
of desertification already settled.
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To prioritise the execution of the “Pantanal Programme” and avoid
waterways works which alter the cycle of the waters in the region.
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To preserve the savanna by avoiding its deforestation and to
substitute the extensive soya culture, an export product of low
aggregated value and whose prices have been falling in the
international market.
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To guarantee, to the Southeast region, the deforestation zero in the
critical zones of the Atlantic Forest, especially in Rio de Janeiro
and south of Bahia, including the biodiversity corridors. The
objective is to achieve deforestation zero by applying,
concomitantly, a native reforestation policy.
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To develop conservation projects of the same
conceptual and geographic scale of the big infrastructure projects
being propagated by the federal government. To condition the
implementation of infrastructure projects to those, which are
incorporated in conservation, projects and which may show
sustainability in the regional and national biodiversity
preservation.
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