Side Event
WORLD WATER DAY - WATER AND BIODIVERSITY: AN ECOSYSTEM PERSPECTIVE FOR THE BRAZILIAN NATIONAL WATER RESOURCES PLAN
Organizer
Secretaria de Recursos Hídricos - Ministério do Meio Ambiente
Date and Time
22 March 2006 13:15 - 15:0
Brazil is the first country in Latin America and the Caribbean to achieve the World Summit on Sustainable Development’s target of developing a national plan for managing its water resources. The National Water Resources Plan (PNRH) addresses the way Brazilian society will face the challenge of promoting the sustainable use of almost 12% of the world’s freshwater. Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world, and such vastness along with the range of climates, topography, economic potential, social and cultural conditions, makes water management an even more complex task. Equally rich in terms of biological diversity, Brazil is the first of the megadiversity countries accounting for roughly 14% of the world’s biota, becoming the protection of ecosystems an imperative. As an essential element for the maintenance of life in terrestrial and aquatic environments, water and biodiversity are intrinsically related to each other, evoking the need for a better understanding of water’s role on ecosystem’s structure, functions, processes and multiple interactions. The PNRH emphasizes the need for integrated management, flexibility to accommodate regional differences, coordination among the different user sectors, land use planning, and integration between inland and coastal water systems. It also reinforces efforts for the integration between Brazilian Water Resources and Biodiversity Policies by proposing the adoption of the ecosystem approach while dealing with water quantity and quality objectives. Special attention was dedicated to frame both policies around concepts such as ecoregional approach (freshwater ecoregions) and watershed management in an effort to incorporate a holistic view of the complex interactions of human and aquatic systems in protecting biological diversity. The CBD COP8 side-event on Water for Biodiversity will outline some of the innovative concepts and methodological approaches applied for the formulation and initial implementation of the PNRH, many of which have relevance to other Latin American nations, particularly those neighboring countries in transboundary basins. For this side event, there will be one or more invited speakers to present introductions, overviews and different perspectives to the topics covered.