Soil and Water Conservation Policies and Actions in Brazil: Lessons from the Past and Perspectives for the Future

摘要

Brazilian soils experience high rates of erosion by water, particularly in agricultural and disturbed areas. Average erosion rates often exceed 25 tons per hectare per year, which are well above the average soil loss tolerance for tropical soils. However, during the last 20 years soil conservation programs were designed and implemented in several regions of the country. Some of these projects were funded by the World Bank. In these projects, the major goals were the reduction of on-site effects, mainly erosion, maintain the soils productive and preserve the vicinal roads. As a consequence, a decrease in erosion was significant, with the introduction of conservation practices such as terraces, vegetative buffer strips and relocation of farm roads. Despite this advance, most actions were not sufficient to reduce off-site impacts, such as river and reservoir sedimentation and water pollution. However, with the country's new technical, institutional and legal realities, it is now possible to implement even more effective conservation programs, where the watershed is taken as the planning unit, user participation is encouraged and off-site issues are explicitly considered. With this new approach, and using different forms of financial and fiscal incentives, the National Water Agency, responsible for the water regulation in Brazil, aims at the reduction of the non-point source pollution from rural areas. This problem will be addressed by incentive payment/cost-sharing agri-environmental programs, where both environmental and economic performances will be the leading criteria. The objective of this paper is to review the Brazilian soil and water conservation policies and programs of the last 20 years, and present the strategies for the new agri-environmental approach, such as ANA's Water Provider Incentive Program.