Fuente : World Bank
http://www.worldbank.org

A Vast Brazilian Project for Water Diversion Is Greeted by Widespread Skepticism

/noticias.info/ For well over a century, the millions of people who live in the parched backlands of northeastern Brazil have looked at the São Francisco River with thirst and longing, The New York Times reports. Nearly 2,000 miles long, it has been seen as the one hope for ending the cycle of drought and exodus that has made this region the poorest and most backward in the country.


But now the government is poised to carry out a bold plan that it says will accomplish those goals. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has authorized $1.7 billion to build a pair of canals hundreds of miles long to divert water from this river basin, the country's second largest, to the most arid parts of the interior. This would be the first phase of a much larger project that envisions eventually redirecting water from the Amazon watershed to this area.


Ciro Gomes, Brazil's minister of national integration, likens the sweep and impact of the plan to the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the United States about 70 years ago. "Roosevelt is a reference point to me," Mr. Gomes said in a telephone interview from Brasília, the capital. "You have to think of what that region was before and what it became later because of his vision."

But opponents of the venture, including environmental groups and business interests, argue that so ambitious an undertaking is unnecessary and far more costly than the initial price indicates. They favor the construction of more reservoirs, cisterns, wells and aqueducts, which they contend would be cheaper and more efficient than building the canals and compromising the flow of a river already damaged by pollution and deforestation.


"The problem of the northeast is not the scarcity of water, but the way that water is managed and existing projects left unfinished," Renato Cunha, Director of the Bahia Environmental Group, said in an interview in Salvador, the state capital. "This plan is not going to solve the problem. It will only exacerbate existing conflicts over who controls land and water."


In a related story on water, The Hindu reports the world water day was celebrated a few days ago. But, how serious are we in ensuring supply of potable water, the elixir of life, to the population in the country? It is evident that even today, 55 years after independence, we do not have a legally enforceable standard to define clean potable water, says the news report.


The United Nations warns that 80 per cent of diseases in developing countries result from unsafe water. A WHO report says that the water consumed by more than one billion people is unsafe. Global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, more than twice the rate of human population growth. In fact, within 25 years, half the world's population could have trouble finding enough freshwater for drinking and irrigation.


Currently, over 80 countries representing 40 per cent of the world's population are subject to serious water shortages. West Asia faces the greatest threat. Over 90 per cent of the region's population is experiencing severe water stress with water consumption exceeding 10 per cent of renewable freshwater resources, notes the news report. notas_de_prensa_archivo