Use of water in the Iberoamérican dry lands: hydro-environmental and socioeconomic efficiency indicators

Abstract

Use of water in the Iberoamérican dry lands: hydro-environmental and socioeconomic efficiency indicators.

The dry lands cover  expressive  surface  of  Iberoamerican  (25%  of  Latin  American  and  Caribbean  and  more  than  half  of  the  Spanish  territory).  In  this context, Brazil is a country that possesses significant volume of the world superficial and underground water resources. However, more than 1300 municipal districts (about 25% of the total of municipal districts of the country), distributed in 9 states are directly or indirectly affected  by  extreme  shortage  of  water  resources  which  has  been  worsened  by  the  climatic  changes,  as  a  consequence  of  the  global warming.  More  than  22.5  million  inhabitants  live  in  the  semi-arid areas of Brazil. It is important to scrutiny all traditional and not traditional technologies  for  reception,  storage  and  use  of  the  water,  adapted  for  different  socioeconomic  and  hydro-environmental  situations  and approve and validate indicators of water use efficiency, as a management strategic tool for water security politics and programs. This work aimed to understand the state of the art on indicators and to discuss the Brazilian case of the semi-arid in the context of the Iberoamerican dry lands, based on the National Plan of Water Resources and on the State of Bahia Plan for Water Resource Management.