Brazilian Regulatory Process: including groundwater in urban water management

Pilar Carolina Villar (1)

1 Environmental Science Graduate Program

Cities have a crucial role in groundwater management. The urban pressure tends to cause great impacts on aquifers. This work is a legal study and aims to verify how Brazilian law about water and urban policies promote better integration of groundwater into urban management processes. The methodology used was a qualitative analysis of environment and urban legislation in São Paulo state, Brazil and urban planning legislation edited by municipalities located in the Guarani aquifer recharge area. The lack of a specific national policy which guides state and local actions is a major problem, especially considering that aquifers trespass the local scale. The state policies most of the time are insufficient and have problems in implementation. Without a regulatory model, local policies rely only on public administration's will which tend to be very susceptible to economic pressure. Despite this, watershed-based management tools starts to bring some guidance to urban director plans.

Mots clés: Management; decision support systems; sustainable development; geopolitics; social conflicts

Domaines: Environnement et Société

Pilar Carolina Villar. Brazilian Regulatory Process: including groundwater in urban water management. 9th World Wide Workshop for Young Environmental Scientists WWW-YES-Brazil-2009: Urban waters: resource or risks?, Oct 2009, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil. ⟨hal-00593302⟩