Drought and water policies in Northeast Brazil: backgrounds and rationale

Abstract

The drought in Northeast Brazil has been the object of many studies and debates. The theme is controversial, with lots of facets and has been under discussion for a long time. After the 1877 drought, which lasted three years and caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people, the search for an understanding of the phenomenon and for its possible solution has been intensified. Experts and lots of non-experts took part in that process, proposing solutions or just giving their opinion. Many of them contributed and aggregated new knowledge and views. A small number of others, in fact, proposed very exotic solutions. This paper provides an historical review of how the issue has been addressed and makes a conceptual approach classifying the solutions and analyzing the efficiency of them. Some proposals are described, such as: the use of camels, crystalline rocks’ blasting, investment for drought forecast processes, damming and irrigation policies and water basin transfer from São Francisco River.