Building Brazil's Water Resilience: A Crucial Step Ahead of COP30
“Resilience constitutes a fundamental shift in perspective. It is a new way of apprehending the world. Once one comprehends the core issues, the realization of resilience cannot be undone,” Mario Lopez, Water Resilience Tracker LAC Regional Lead, told a room of more than 50 ministerial representatives and climate experts united by their mission to help build a more resilient Brazil.
Representatives of AGWA, Brazil’s National Water Agency (ANA), the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MMA), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and a research team at the University of Ceará had gathered in Brasilia, Brazil, to mark the release of a report assessing Brazil's water resilience. The report covers Brazil's application of the Water Resilience Tracker Tool for national climate planning, focusing on integrating water resilience into climate policies and strategies.
Building resilience through water
When we manage and distribute water wisely, it becomes a far more powerful resource. It's not just a problem to solve, but a way to boost prosperity and improve lives and the environment. When we manage and distribute water for resilience, we are preparing for the quantity and quality of that water to change in uncertain ways because of climate change. Large-scale resilience – resilience for a whole country – necessitates the utilization of water as the primary instrument for assessing both climate risk and the potential for resilience: which manifest both vertically within ministries and horizontally across inter-ministerial bodies.
Brazil's diverse regions face unique climate-related challenges, including deforestation, droughts, and floods, which threaten ecosystems and livelihoods. Each region's vulnerabilities necessitate tailored adaptation strategies.
The Water Resilience Tracker works to identify the integration of water resources in climate planning and guide decision-makers in strengthening such adaptation strategies addressing a far reaching risk with a cross sectoral approach. In Brazil’s case, “this project has facilitated policy dialogue on water resilience planning and the collaborative efforts between various agencies within the climate and water sectors,” said Paula Roberts from the InterAmerican Development Bank.
Water is essential for most adaptation and mitigation solutions. The strategic integration of resilient water management into national climate planning can make the difference between whether or not climate solutions deliver their intended benefits.
The data and interviews conducted with Brazilian ministries during the first phase of the Water Resilience Tracker revealed a prevailing perception wherein ministries regarded water as a basic economic input, a numerical value within a spreadsheet. Water’s presence could be taken for granted. Institutionally, water was not being viewed as a strategic asset, overlooking its capacity for significant and abrupt change.
Shifting how water is being seen and valued could facilitate new and improved investments, projects, and programs.
“The Tracker is helping [Brazil] preparing for a resilient future where water is central to climate response.”
Dr. Cássio Rampinelli, an Infrastructure Analyst for Water Resources Engineering at Brazil’s Agência Nacional de Águas e Saneamento Básico (ANA), reiterated the importance of the Tracker to building Brazil’s resilience at COP29: “[the Tracker] helped us understand which documents are good documents and which need to be reviewed and improved.” He continued: connecting water resilience across sectors using tools like the Tracker empowers Brazil to anticipate and manage climate risks holistically, preparing them for a resilient future where "water is central to climate response”.
How Brazil is leading by example ahead of COP30
In less than six months from now the world’s climate experts and advocates and policymakers will descend on Belém, Brazil. Over the past year AGWA has been working closely with the government of Brazil through its Water Resilience Tracker program - building momentum and resilience ahead of COP30.
The extreme and unprecedented 2024 Rio Grande do Sul floods were a stark reminder of how catastrophic the manifestation of water-related risks can be - exposing vulnerabilities in investments and inter-sectoral coordination, potentially leading to economic and infrastructural setbacks.
These vulnerabilities could have been anticipated and mitigated.
The Water Resilience Tracker was envisioned as the tool to identify these deficiencies and promote the integration of resilience as a fundamental paradigm for managing not only water resources but also various forms of climatic, economic, and political uncertainties.
"The Water Resilience Tracker has been an important tool in helping us identify critical gaps and strengthen adaptation strategies that place water resilience at the center of climate action in Brazil” said Ana Paula Fioreze, National Water Agency of Brazil. Going forward, Brazil’s National Water Agency plans to use the Tracker to inform the development of next-generation water plans to be “more adaptive, forward-looking, and designed to secure water resources in the face of increasing climate variability," Fioreze continues.
AGWA will continue its close collaboration with the Brazilian government in the run up to COP30 and beyond. The work will focus on capacity building, the development of sectoral NAPs, coordinated by the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.
Brazil’s government has already recognized what a valuable tool and approach the Tracker is at a national level and will be using its questionnaire for regional planning as well as in the development of four climate-resilient river basin management plans.
Water Resilience Tracker - Informe de País Brasil (Português)
Water Resilience Tracker - Brazil Country Report (English)