Posted in: 09/12/2022
Synergia participated in the XXIV ENCOB 2022 , the National Meeting of River Basin Committees , considered one of the main events on water resource management in Brazil as it encompasses all sectors and interests for water use.
The meeting is recognized for bringing an overview of the use of water resources in the country, in addition to giving civil society , private companies and public institutions the opportunity to discuss and deliberate on the actions that will be carried out in the coming years.
The theme chosen for the 2022 edition was “ Water Management: Everyone’s Responsibility ”. Among the outstanding issues was water scarcity , addressed mainly by the River Basin Committees , which pointed to both climatic factors and deforestation , degradation of basins and poor management and treatment of the soil as determining agents for the current situation of scarcity.
The possible conflicts caused by the decrease in water availability and the increase in water consumption by society, the empowerment of the River Basin Committees in the face of the new political framework that will be established after the elections and the general lack of technical support so that the committees can plan strategically more assertive water management actions were also discussed.
In addition to these, the participation of women in basin committees and in water management gained prominence. Several workshops highlighted the importance of women in discussions on water scarcity within the basin committees. The event also featured the launch of the book Mulheres pela Água 2 and the Talent Platform Mulheres pela Águas .
Responsible for representing Synergia at the XXIV ENCOB 2022, specialist Dr. Rinaldo de Oliveira Calheiros , senior researcher and consultant in Water Sustainability, presented a technical-scientific paper on new concepts, strategies and zoological accounting that lead to water insufficiency in municipalities in Brazil.
The work demonstrates the possibility of applying new concepts of water management and compartmentalization within hydrographic basins that already have configured a competition for the use of water. In addition, the work exposes techniques that must be used to stimulate the production of water within a municipality so that it can achieve water self-sufficiency.
The ideas discussed are of great importance because they show how municipalities can produce the water they need within their territories , so that they are not trapped in the public management policies of municipalities that are in the same amount of their catchment source. That is, this water self-sufficiency strategy solves the fragility that a municipality has in relation to others, preventing them from being affected by their behavior in relation to the catchment source .
The concepts and techniques of water production have even been presented by Rinaldo Calheiros in the book Fundamentals on Water Production , published in 2020. The publication, in addition to clarifying concepts that are normally misunderstood, presents “basic fundamentals that make up the processes of retention, infiltration, percolation, recharge of aquifers and the availability of surface water through springs and base flow in lakes and watercourses”.
For Calheiros, participation in the XXIV ENCOB 2022 is extremely important because, in addition to being a democratic forum for discussion , the event brings together the main determinants in terms of water resources policy in Brazil : “This forum is, in fact, the most important forum for debates on the water problem in the country, has no equal. All others are localized, restricted or specialized, discussing water management in industry, agriculture, among others. But this one encompasses all sectors and interests, and is very participatory. It is the forum where we go to present our demands, to learn a lot from the experiences of others, share and have an overview of the trend in negotiations by the water resources forces in the country”, he comments.
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