Technical cooperation between the Loire-Brittany Water Agency and the Piracicaba-Capivari Jundiaí Basin Organization (PCJ) Brazil

The legal and institutional framework of the Law 9.433 of January 1997 on integrated water resources management in Brazil was inspired by the French Laws of 1964 and 1992. Technical, academic and institutional exchanges between the two countries have played an important role in its development and implementation.

Brazil has 27 States, with a significant variety of climatic, cultural, economic and social situations and each with considerable autonomy from a political and administrative viewpoint.

The Brazilian institutional framework is comparable in many ways to that of the European Union.

As part of the financing of decentralized cooperation, the French Loire-Brittany Water Agency started a project alongside the PCJ - Piracicaba and Capivari Jundiai Consortium and the International Office for Water to address, through training and exchange of expertise, the three following priority topics :

* Comparison of the Brazilian Water Resources Management System with WFD

The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) of 2000 is interesting the Brazilian experts, since it implements a process of articulation between different levels of jurisdiction, echoing the difficulties faced in applying the Law of 1997 in the Brazilian federal context.

* Water resources planning

The experts involved will produce a comparative assessment of practices in both countries and propose changes :

- Brazilian experience : National Plan for Water Resources in 2006, the development of Plans for Water Resources in several federal States, and many Basin Plans in various parts of the country, on very different geographical scales, and with widely varying technical characteristics and levels of participation of water stakeholders or of a wider public.

- French experience : Basin Master Plans (SDAGE and SAGE) and more recently the WFD Management Plans.

* Financing of water resources management

The mobilized experts will produce a comparative assessment of practices, including water taxes and the application of the "polluter-pays" and "user-pays" principles in both countries and propose changes.

The results obtained in this project will be presented in a side event at the 6th World Water Forum of Marseilles in 2012.