Water Sustainability at the River Grande Basin, Brazil: An Approach Based on the Barometer of Sustainability

Abstract

Water resources are fundamental for the social and economic development of a country and sustainability is the best approach to treat water-related problems. Therefore, sustainability studies of water resources are deemed urgent. Sustainability analysis methods should enable space-temporal monitoring, decision-making, and development of policies necessary for water governance. Furthermore, sustainability analysis methods should also integrate environment and socioeconomic variables into a single system. In this context, this study aimed to assess the water sustainability conditions of the River Grande Basin (BHRG), Brazil, before the implementation of the Integrated Water Resources Plan (IWRP), using the Barometer of Sustainability tool (BS). The River Grande basin was in an “almost unsustainable” condition and under high environmental stress. A significant imbalance between environmental and human well-being in the system was also observed. To achieve an acceptable sustainability condition, it is thus necessary to improve the environmental quality of the area. Among the priority thematic area, native vegetation recovery was the most urgent. Overall, the sustainability study based on the BS not only facilitates comprehension regarding environment and human interrelationships, but also provide references for policy formulations and water management.

Environmental Land Use Conflicts in a Macroscale River Basin: A Preliminary Study Based on the Ruggedness Number

“…However, it is important to highlight that socioeconomic development must be linked to environmental quality. This requires integrating water resources management with other public administration sectors that also affect water quality and availability [21]. Land management, closely related to land use and occupation, must be adapted in accordance to environmental, social and development policies.…”

“…BHRG is located in the southeastern region of Brazil and has a contribution area of approximately 145,000 km 2 divided between the state of Minas Gerais (60% of the total area of the basin) and the state of São Paulo (40% of the total area of the basin) (Figure 1) [21,22]. The basin is made up of 393 municipalities, totally or partially inserted in it, which corresponded to 4.5% of the Brazilian population in 2010.…”

Proposal of a water management sustainability index for the 969 sub-basins of Mexico

“…The performance scale of the sustainability indexes is established subjectively in the water sustainability indexes (Guidolini et al, 2018), thus in this work is proposed a technique based on the coding of the subindexes ranking to improve the interpretation of the WMSI. Since the WMSI does not reflect the specific conditions of the sub-systems of the sub-basins, a combination matrix with the ESEI codes (Economic, Social, Environmental, and Institutional) was designed in which the scores of the sub-indexes were represented by codes.…”

Applying the Sustainability Barometer Approach to Assess Urban Sustainability

“…The results indicated that the region is potentially unsustainable [30]. This method has been used in other studies to assess water sustainability and agricultural sustainability [31][32][33]. This assessment tool was chosen for measuring sustainability in the present study since it has some significant advantages over other approaches:…”