Interbasin Water Transfers: The Brazilian Experience and International Case Comparisons

Abstract

This paper critically examines Brazil's transbasin diversion experiences and two select, large-scale transbasin projects outside of Brazil. Rather than simply compare Brazil's experiences with international cases, the authors explore the historical context of the projects, focusing on the water resources and environmental regulatory and institutional frameworks in place during the initial proposals and how they influenced the projects' development and completion rates. Huge investments, the lengthy time span between the date of the initial project proposals and the start of construction, the need to garner public and political support, and more recently, the need to fulfill national and regional environmental laws are major factors underlying heated public debates about the proposed projects. After a broad discussion about the subject, the authors examine a recently approved large-scale Brazilian project, the Sao Francisco river transbasin diversion. This river diversion project is considered crucial to the economic development of Brazil's semi-arid northeastern region. Despite the fact that this government-funded project was debated for several decades among the various stakeholders, it was approved under Brazil's newly formed water resources regulatory and environmental framework, which enabled improvements in various key technical aspects of the project, and greater involvement of various key social players.

Infrastructure sufficiency in meeting water demand under climate-induced socio-hydrological transition in the urbanizing Capibaribe River basin – Brazil

“…These results show that the objective of the São Francisco project, to augment water supply in a manner that enhances local infrastructure, is reached in the CRB. That is the kind of positive impact expected by analysts that assessed the project (Pena de Andrade et al, 2011).…”

Impacts of the eastern route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project emergency operation on flooding and drainage in water-receiving areas: an empirical case in China

“…Liu et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2018). The early flooding and waterlogging simulations of a basin are mainly based on hydrological models, including the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) (Lee and Heaney, 2003), Model for Urban Storm water Improvement Conceptualisation (MUSIC) (Dotto et al, 2011;Hamel and Fletcher, 2014), Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) (Dixon and Earls, 2012), and MIKE-SHE (Vrebos et al, 2014), among others. However, hydrological models only simulate the flood-routing process according to the water balance equation and are unable to display the spatial distribution of flood movement.…”

An integrated assessment of China's South—North Water Transfer Project

“…The broader scholarship on interbasin transfers extends to projects in Thailand, Brazil, China, Iran, Australia, Canada, and the United States (de Andrade et al, 2011;Ghassemi & White, 2006;Gohari et al, 2013;Roman, 2017) discusses the effects of transfer schemes on water demand, compares approaches to pricing and management between different schemes, and outlines ecological impacts such as habitat loss and changes to flow regimes and sediment loads. However, while interbasin transfers are prone to deep conflicts of interest and trigger many questions about the distribution of environmental, social, and economic impacts between donor and receiving areas (Rinaudo & Barraqué, 2015;Yevjevich, 2001), hydrologic or other environmental analyses have been poorly integrated with political and socio-economic analyses.…”