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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
To support forest research, mainly as
to the utilisation of native forest species for reforestation.
-
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.
-
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.
-
To stimulate the silvo-cultures (forest
planting), in order to guarantee the supply of timber from planted
forests.
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
To establish planning mechanisms for sustainable
landscapes which may conciliate the formation of protected areas
systems with areas of economic use in regional matrices.
-
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.
-
To institute norms and create systems
of surveillance and control which allow an effective combat to bio
pirating.
-
To guarantee that detectors of raw materials
and/or knowledge, which lead to the economical use of our biodiversity
model, be duly remunerated.
-
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.
-
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.
Exemplary
Actions in Threatened Biomass
-
To implement programmes of biodiversity
corridors in every biomass with representatives from all the big bio-geographic
subdivisions of the regions.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
To promote the handling of the “caatinga”
in the semi-arid area in order to avoid the formation of desertification
nucleuses.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
To prioritise the execution of the “Pantanal
Programme” and avoid waterways works which alter the cycle of
the waters in the region.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.