STRATEGIC SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT APPLIED TO INTEGRATED WATER MANAGEMENT OF THE SÃO FRANCISCO RIVER BASIN

The aim of this Thesis is to analyse planning strategies for water sustainability in developing
countries’ large tropical drainage basins, while contributing to the sustainable integrated water
resources management by undergoing a strategic environmental assessment process. Best
practices of water management incorporate concepts of integrated water resources
management and planning and management at the river basin level. Strategic environmental
assessment is recognised as an important tool for integrated water resources management,
but its application to river basins is still shy in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin
America and Caribbean, where frequently lacks legal framework. In this context, it is asked
how to define, characterize, and assess, in a context defined by climate change and rapid
population and economic growth, the main challenges concerning water management in large
tropical drainage basins, and how to assess, in a simple and prompt way, the adequacy of the
water management objectives relative to the sustainability challenges. Using as case study the
São Francisco River Basin, a large Brazilian drainage basin, the strategic environmental
assessment focuses on the analysis of 2016-2025 Management Plan and the implementation
of the proposed Action Plan. Based on plans that interfere with the São Francisco Basin and
on prospective water demand scenarios developed for the Basin, the main sustainability
challenges include overexploitation of the surface water, the strategic role of groundwater, the
management of the Northeast Brazil’s semiarid region and the Basin’s climate change
resilience. The assessment considers as critical decision factors river basin planning and water
governance, water quality and sanitation, water availability and sustainability, climate
resilience in the semiarid region, biodiversity and conservation, land use and dam safety. The
decision factors are scored considering information sourced from the diagnostic of River Basin
Management Plan, an actualization by 2021 of the implementation of the 2016-2025 Action
Plan, updated news on the São Francisco River Basin and opinions and comments of Basin’s
key stakeholders. The assessment shows that water availability, considering present and
future demands, is critical in the Basin (particularly in the downstream half of the basin. In this
context, it is found that São Francisco River Basin Management Plan considers all the relevant
issues for the Basin’s sustainability and the respective action Plan adequately frames the
action required to deal with those issues, but also that its implementation has been very slow,
with the global perceived effect of the Action Plan being assessed as fairly good. This result,
characterized as environmental acupuncture, concurred from stagnation of the Brazilian
economy’s growth in the period (2016-2021) but also from the lack of accomplishment of
significant governance commitment through a Water Pact, hampered by poor coordination of
the different levels of governance in the Brazilian federative system, together with conflicts
among different water users. Important paths to sustainability in the Basin include the stronger
account of ecosystems water needs in the regulatory framework and the sustainability-oriented
education of institutional and water users stakeholders. The significance of this study is that it
allows the identification of seven main critical issues for river basin planning and management
to ensure sustainability, typically applicable in large river basins in developing countries which
are governance, groundwater resources, sanitation, education and public participation,
empowerment and inclusion, ecological / environmental flows and adequate funding.
Keywords: river basin; water management; water governance; climate change; strategic
envionmental assessment.