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Atfaddal......
Million Cistern Project Provides Life-giving Water in Brazil
By Saulo Araujo
July 20th, 2008
Categories:
* _Brazil_ (http://www.grassrootsonline.org/term/brazil)
* _Pólo Sindical_ (http://www.grassrootsonline.org/term/p-lo-sindical)
* _Water Rights_ (http://www.grassrootsonline.org/term/water-rights)
Brazil's northeast, with the biggest population of any arid region in the
world, is home to many of the more than 10 million Brazilians who live without
regular access to clean and safe drinking water. For years the people of the
region struggled to survive with no help from national public policy makers.
Now policy makers are pursuing two very different approaches to the problem of
the northeast's water insecurity: a community driven, grassroots public
policy that supports building low-cost cisterns to provide water to the families
who need it most, and a top-down mega-project to redirect the São Francisco
River through a massive series of dams and canals.
Polo Sindical, an association of rural unions and a Grassroots International
partner based in the northeastern states of Pernambuco and Bahia, is a key
part of the movement that was instrumental in building the grassroots model and
struggling to make sure that the mega-project does not have catastrophic
results for the region's citizens.
Polo emerged in 1979 to protest the construction of the Itaparica Dam, a
hydro-electric dam in the mid-course region of the São Francisco River. When the
dam displaced thousands of peasants and small-scale farmers, bringing land
and water rights became top priorities for Polo. One of their early victories
was the resettlement of the affected families.
The idea for the cistern project was born in the 1980s, when Manuel Apolônio
de Carvalho, a worker from the northeast, migrated to São Paulo to find work.
He realized that the construction techniques he learned to build swimming
pools for the wealthy could also be used to capture rainwater for the poor. He
returned to the northeast and began collaborating with local groups like Polo
to perfect the system using the principles of agro-ecology. Each cistern can
capture enough water in a few rainy months to provide water for an average
household of 5-6 people for the rest of the year.
In addition to building cisterns with their own resources, the groups
organized and lobbied and now the federal government is helping to finance cistern
production. What began as a grassroots self-help movement has become a
national policy–embodied in the Million Cistern Project–that will provide drinking
water to 5 million people.
Polo Sindical and its affiliated organizations are members of a larger
network called Articulação no Semi-Árido (ASA), or in English the Semi-Arid
Network. ASA includes more than 800 organizations. As one of the 45 management
units of ASA, as of 2005 Polo Sindical has overseen the construction 1,379
cisterns benefiting 7,049 people. In all, more than 100,000 cisterns were built
between 2001 and 2005 (including 77,000 that were financed by the Brazilian
government).
While cisterns provide life-giving water to thousands of homes, some would
prefer to develop water resources on a grander scale. The Lula government is
the latest in a series to propose a monumental reconfiguration of the landscape
of the northeast by re-distributing the water of the São Francisco River.
Political leaders believe that the plan will transform the dry northeast into a
productive agricultural region, and re-cast the political landscape in favor
of whichever party is able to succeed in pushing the plan through.
Brazil's social movements aren't so sure about the supposed benefits of the
plan. Over the years, similar projects around the world have had disastrous
results, from the toxic wasteland left by the evaporation of the Aral Sea, to
the catastrophic flooding of the canal-ized Mississippi. Several points in the
São Francisco project are troubling: environmental impacts may cost the
sustainability of poor people's livelihoods; the claim that 12 million people
will have access to water seems wildly exaggerated; irrigation projects along
the way will displace hundreds or thousands of people to make room for large
agribusinesses; and last but not least, the control over water resources will
remain in the hands of ruling local political groups, not in the hands of
families of communities. The proponents of the plan in the government have not
responded properly to these concerns.
Social movements are working on different fronts to fight these potentially
disastrous top-down policies. Among other strategies, they are using legal
procedures to stop the São Francisco transposition project.
Through the support of Grassroots International, Polo has built cisterns in
rural households in Pernambuco and the neighboring state of Bahia, organized
workshops about water management in dry areas and is pioneering the
development of new technology like underground dams that trap sub-surface water in
seasonal streams. "With Grassroots' help, we are developing new agro-ecological
solutions," said Ademar Silva, one of the directors of Polo Sindical. With the
help of a dedicated movement, Polo is transforming the political and
economic landscape of the Northeast from the grassroots.
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