Brazil

 

According to official statistics, the total number of jobs in the water and sanitation sector in Brazil is 726,586, including about 238,000 people for the State of São Paulo alone.

 

Brazil is making huge investments for developing this sector; according to data from PLANSAB, nearly 100 billion Euros of investments are planned over the 2014-2033 period, mainly in urban sanitation.

 

In this very driving context, the SERT (Secretariat of Employment and Labor of the State of São Paolo) decided to launch a major staff training pilot project, based on the outcomes of the feasibility study made for the establishment of a Vocational Water Training Center (WTC) in São Paulo, in which IOWater contributed in late 2013 and early 2014. The HYDRUS Association will be the contracting authority of this project.

 

The establishment of the HYDRUS-BRAZIL Association, in which IOWater is a founding member, was officially announced during the 7th World Water Forum in Daegu.

 

The Constitutive Assembly of the Association was held in Brazil in July 2015 and the statutes were officially filed.

 

Many activities are being developed by the team of the HYDRUS Association to support and strengthen the creation of the future Water Training Center in São Paulo and of a branch in Brasilia for training on the governance of resources and water utilities.

 

 

 

 

The triangular cooperation program, facilitated by IOWater, between the basin committees of the State of Rio Grande do Sul in the far south of Brazil, the Basin Committee of the Loire-Brittany Water Agency and the Inter-Municipal Consortium of Piracicaba, Capivari and Jundiaí Basins in the State of São Paulo allowed the realization of many activities in 2015.

 

A reference document comparing the current situation of water management in the three regions concerned was drafted in French and Portuguese. It will be made available online to the public in the form of sheets.

 

Exchange workshops enabled members of the Rio Grande do Sul Basin Committees to think, using the experience of the Loire Brittany Water Agency, about the challenges of articulating different planning scales with the organization of stakeholders to ensure the effective implementation of the planned actions.

 

They participated in a technical visit in the PCJ Basins and in the Rio de Janeiro State in order to know about the experiments of establishing Brazilian Basin Agencies and tax-aid mechanisms in these two contrasting contexts.

 

This first phase of the triangular cooperation was completed in December 2015 with a working seminar on the establishment of Basin Agencies in the Rio Grande do Sul. The region, regrouping the Uruguay River tributaries is candidate for a pilot experiment for establishing a Basin Agency in this State.

 

The presentation of detailed data on the early years of operation of the French Agencies, in the 1970s, strongly interested Brazilian stakeholders facing similar issues to those encountered by the pioneers of the French basin water management system fifty years ago;

 

Following these positive results, a new phase of the triangular cooperation program has just started. Comparison of experiences in the development of Basin Agencies in different Brazilian States and in the Loire-Brittany Basin will be made more thoroughly.