Northeast
Brazil is home to some 25 million people living in a 1 million km2
area, and is often referred to as the most densely populated semi-arid
region on earth.Once every
decade, on average, it is subjected to a severe El-Niño related drought
that can last between two and four years.These droughts are particularly devastating for the rural
population by causing the disintegration of the main life-sustaining
activity in the region: subsistence agriculture.When droughts occur, a large proportion of the population, mostly
the young working-age men, migrate out of the region, leaving the women,
children and the elderly to cope with hunger and diseases, and to become
totally dependent on inadequate government food and water distribution
programs.
The
Northeastern Brazil Groundwater Project (2000-2004), also known as
PROASNE, is a technology transfer program funded by the Canadian
International Development Agency (CIDA) designed to help develop the
region’s groundwater resources as a means of augmenting the long-term
water supply for the rural communities, thus reducing the hardship caused
by drought and improving living conditions in general.But developing the groundwater resources in northeast Brazil poses
special challenges due to the fact that groundwater is not plentiful and
is difficult to find in the hard and impermeable Precambrian crystalline
bedrock that underlies most of the region.Also contributing to the problem are: low precipitation and very
high evaporation rates; the fact that surface waters are mostly polluted
and groundwater is generally brackish and unfit for human consumption
without treatment; an inadequate supply of energy to pump, transport and
treat water; and a poor and uninformed population, generally unaware of
the basic principles of water conservation, surface and groundwater
protection, safe farming practices, etc.
Through
PROASNE, Canada supplies state-of-the-art technologies to Brazilian
institutions, as needed, to permit these institutions to carry out more
efficient groundwater development projects. Canadian technology is
delivered mostly by the Canadian private sector under contract to PROASNE.
The project uses a technology transfer/capacity building approach, and
operates in 4 pilot areas in 3 states. In parallel to the technical
program, the project has an elaborate social/gender program conducted by
Brazilian social service providers under the supervision of a Canadian
specialist. The project is contributing to the sustainable development of
Brazil's groundwater resources and provides an important humanitarian
outlet for Canadian technology.
To
date, PROASNE has achieved major successes in using airborne geophysics as
a tool to rapidly map the occurrence of groundwater over large areas; in
applying Canadian solar technology in groundwater management; in
developing a national groundwater database accessible through the
Internet; and at the community level through its education and community
development program which has become a model for the development of
similar projects in other part of the world.
The
links in the sub-menu on the left provide access to early documents that
resulted from the project development efforts. See also Project
Overview.
last
modified: 2005-11-12
PROASNE
operates in 4 pilot
areas in 3 states: Ceará, Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Norte