A comparison between the European and the Brazilian models for management and diagnosis of river basins (original) (raw)
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The Brazilian Water Resources Management Policy:Fifteen Years of Success and Challenges
As a result of the increasing global awareness about the importance of water, many developed and developing countries have reviewed their water resources management policies and laws. In Brazil, Law 9,433, enacted in (1997), establishes the National Water Resources Policy (NWRP) and the National Water Resource Management System (NWRMS), introducing a new integrated approach to water resources management through the application of planning and economic instruments. At the institutional level, this brought many changes. A new institutional framework was established with the creation of river basin committees and water agencies. Almost 15 years after the Law took effect, these changes are still being implemented, and some adjustments have been necessary. In light of the Brazilian NWRP, this paper presents and analyzes the legal and institutional reform that has been taking place in Brazil’s water resources sector since 1997. An initial analysis shows that today, the implementation process still faces many challenges, hindering the effective consolidation of the instruments set out by Law 9,433/1997. The paper concludes that although Brazil’s model is generally in line with international trends, and despite the major progress that has been made to date, in some hydrographic regions the instruments conceived in the country’s model are still in the incipient stage of implementation, indicating that greater efforts are necessary, some of which are suggested in this article.
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Water Resources Management VI, 2011
Continuous population growth, increasing industrialization and expanding irrigated agriculture are all placing a strain on scarce water supplies, including serious depletion of aquifers. To address this reality, in Brazil Law 9433, enacted in 1997, established the National Water Resources Policy and created the National Water Resource Management System, introducing a new integrated approach to environmental management policies through the application of economic-based instruments. This law defined the hydrographic basin as the unit of planning, considering multiple water uses, and introduced many changes at the institutional and policy instruments levels. However, nearly fourteen years after the enactment of this law, instead of integrated management and planning as originally envisioned, in many respects Brazil has returned to a strictly command and control approach. Evidence of this trend is the process of revising the rules on water quality standards and pollutant discharge limits by the federal environmental agency (CONAMA Resolution 357/2005). This process resulted in CONAMA Resolution 396/2008, which despite many criticisms maintained fixed limits for pollutant discharges, thus making no distinction between these discharges according to the related polluting activity or technology, or the carrying capacity of the natural water body. The wisest course would have been to base the revision on the international water management experience. This article aims to contribute to this effort, by analyzing the case of the United States, which can provide valuable insight in terms of defining water quality standards and effluent discharge limits based on control technologies and industrial typologies.
River Basin Management And The National Water Resources Policy In Brazil
1970
In 1997, Brazil enacted Law NO. 9,433 on Water Resources Management, based on the following principles: water is an asset within the public domain; water is a limited natural resource with economic value; in case of shortages, the primary use of water is for human consumption and drinking water for livestock; its management should foster multiple water use; the river basin is the selected planning unit; water management should be decentralized and cooperative. Until this law came into effect, environmental management in Brazil was based on an institutional and legal structure that assigned high priority to centralized activity by Government agencies, particularly at the Federal and State level, through conventional regulatory control tools. l Main Brazilian river basin Covering 8,547,403 square kilometers, Brazil has eight major river basins, defined by their catchment areas and physical characteristics : Amazon Basin covers a catchment area of six million square kilometers (some 3....
Revista Brasileira de Ciências Ambientais (Online), 2020
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