Brazilian Regulatory Process: including groundwater in urban water management (original) (raw)
Related papers
Water resources and urban planning: the case of a coastal area in Brazil
Urban planning requires the integration of several disciplines, among them ones related to water resources. The impacts of urban development on those resources, and viceversa, are well known, but some aspects have not been well characterized in literature. This research analyzes a case that shows interesting relationships between urban planning, its legislation, the evolution of urban occupation and several aspects of water resources: groundwater, surface water, drainage and saltwater intrusion. The research argues for integrated and dynamic planning, monitoring and directive enforcement of the urban processes, including environmental dimension and water resources. Advanced decision support techniques are suggested as tools for supporting this integrated approach.
Brazilian Groundwater Law – Abstraction and Pollution Controls
How the national water laws of Brazil address groundwater abstraction and pollution control? Groundwater comprises of 97% of the accessible freshwater reserves in the world. The Guarani Aquifer System (SAG) is the largest groundwater system in Latin America, shared by the four nations of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and considered one of the largest in the world. The Project for the Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development of the Guarani Aquifer System (PSAG) seeks to develop a regional agreement for its management. In the process, the PSAG performed a legal and institutional analysis of the four countries, in which Brazil was cited as best practice. Brazil, an emerging nation, seeks to utilize the SAG to further its economic and social development. Considering the Brazil's economic and social development and being cited as a best practice, this paper analyzes the national water laws of Brazil regarding abstraction and pollution control.
Water Management in Metropolitan São Paulo
International Journal of Water Resources Development, 2006
Densely urbanized basins face a challenge to implement the concept of integrated water resources management at the river basin level. In these basins there is the interaction of different sectors of human activity, including transportation and housing, that need to be incorporated in the management system. Moreover, the frequently used interbasin transfer schemes impose a more encompassing management method. This paper proposes a new concept: the total urban water management. Under this new concept, integration is applied indistinctly to sectorial vectors (combining different water uses) and to the territorial vectors, in the sense of horizontally cutting across different jurisdictions on the territory. This new approach is applied to the case of the metropolitan region of São Paulo. As a result of the federative political system in Brazil, this region presents a complex institutional arrangement. Union and States are in charge of the administration of rivers and the municipalities are in charge of land use management. Hence, it is not enough to establish a water management system because the management of land use in the river basin impacts the water use in the rivers. A metropolitan management system, which includes municipalities and the State, is proposed to take into account all the aspects of an integrated management system.
PROCAM-USP, São …, 2005
The most populated and industrialized region of Latin America, the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo host 18 millions people in 39 municipalities. The urban water services are managed in a centralized way by a state firm which provides for a domestic demand of 63 m 3 /s of which 50 % is imported from a neighbouring catchment. Half of the water comes from the periurban catchments of the agglomeration which are submitted to a rapid subnormal urbanization with inadequate sanitation arrangement that directly impact the quality of the water. The tensions are likely to increase with the increasing population and difficulties for the sanitation authorities to keep pace with the urbanization processes. Land management is under the responsibility of the municipalities but a specific land legislation to control urbanization in the catchment defined in the 70's did not permit to control urbanization. The implementation since 1995 of an integrated water management policy has permitted to implement multi-stakeholder platforms for water managemen called catchment commiteet, to better articulate land management and water management, as well as to facilitate the participation of civil society in the process.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 2008
The extension and complexity of large cities creates "urban water" and a related issue: public water services, including public water supply, sewage collection and treatment, and storm water control, had previously become a policy sector separate from water resource allocation issues thanks to water transport and treatment technologies. Large metropolitan areas today cannot take nature for granted anymore, and they need to protect water resources, if only to reduce the long term cost of transporting and treating water. In this paper, we compare the historical development of water services in European and Brazilian metropolitan areas, placing the technological developments in their geographic, socioeconomic and political contexts. Our frame is to follow the successive contributions of civil engineering, sanitary engineering, and environmental engineering: the "quantity of water" and civil engineering paradigm allowed to mobilise water in and out of the city, and up the hills or the floors; in the "water quality" and chemical/sanitary engineering paradigm, water treatment gave more freedom to cities to take water from rivers closer to them, but also to reduce sewer discharge impacts; lastly, the environmental engineering paradigm proposes to overcome the supply side perspective, by introducing demand side management, water conservation, water allocation flexibilisation, and an integrated approach to water services, water resources management, and land use policies.
2015 Ninth International Conference on Complex, Intelligent, and Software Intensive Systems, 2015
In the present scenario of implementation of the National Water Resources Policy (PNRH), there is consensus on the strategic importance of groundwater to achieve the basic objective of the policy, which is to ensure the current and future generations the necessary water availability, on quality standards appropriate to their uses. A specificity of groundwater in the Brazilian legal system is the exclusivity of your domain assigned to states by CF / 88. In this context, this article presents the partial results of research that has been carried out under the Project Network Guarani / Serra Geral, aims, carry out a comparative analysis of the governance of groundwater from the instruments of PNRH by check existence of such law, regulation and implementation of the same in the states of Sao Paulo, Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. To achieve the objective of the research an adapted methodological model of Foster et al [1] and proposed theoretical model by Turton et al [2] were used. The analysis of the results concluded that the states of São Paulo and Paraná obtained high performance in the implementation of the instruments of PNRH, while the states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul had average performance.
Proposals for water conservation in urban areas in Brazil
Desenvolvimento e Meio Ambiente
This study aims to propose measures for water conservation in urban areas in Brazil. Several measures are proposed, such as reduction of garden watering, water conservation in buildings, water reuse in urban areas and in buildings (greywater), use of rainwater, use of water from air-conditioners, control of losses in water supply systems, among others. Recommendations are made for actions to be developed in order to engage the community in water conservation programs. Measures for water conservation in urban areas are indicated. A national structure is proposed for a water conservation program in urban areas in Brazil. Also, it is proposed how the participation of national, federal and municipal agencies should be, indicating their respective attributions.
Water Resource Management in Sao Paulo State, Brazil: A Comparative Perspective
2015
The reforms of the water management system in Brazil, especially in the Sao Paulo Metropolitan Area and the Paraiba’s River Valley are analyzed as cases of an institutional transition towards a "hydro-policy", in which are build, sometimes in a controversial way, the conditions for new institutional spheres, changing the relationship between experts and laymen, technicians and users, and the public and private sector.
Integrated urban water governance in Belo Horizonte, Brazil: changes and inertias
International Journal of Water, 2012
This contribution intends to contribute to the analysis of changes in the model of water governance in Belo Horizonte. The first part of the article explores how different theories concerning governance can be interpreted in different ways and, based on this, develops three water governance models: 1 the previous centralised model 2 the traditional normative model 3 the currently implemented model. The second part of the contribution focuses on understanding the changes and inertias that occurred in the city from the perspective of three domains, namely, decentralisation, participation and integration. It is shown that, from an historical institutional viewpoint, policy choices made in the past have acted as constraints over future options (application of path dependency theory). The analysis may contribute to understanding the changes in policies within the water sector. The empirical analysis presented leads to the conclusion that the changes in governance were not sufficient to radically transform the management principles applied in practice.