Enhancing water resilience is urgent in Brazil, where nearly 100 million people lack access to safe sanitation. In addition, over 200 million rely on hydropower for two-thirds of their electricity, further reinforcing the importance of resilience, especially given the increasing intensity and frequency of extreme water-related events such as floods and droughts.

Fostering Water Resilience in Brazil: TurningStrategy into Action builds on the policy recommendations set out in the OECD reports Water Resources Governance in Brazil (2015) and Water Charges in Brazil (2017), and four multi-stakeholder, capacity-building workshops carried out over the period 2019-21 to learn from the state-of-the-art and international best practices.

The increased frequency and intensity of water-related events in Brazil due to climate change puts people at risk, reduces the reliability of water infrastructure and undermines national food and energy security. In 2020, 1.1 million people were affected by floods and about 15 million by droughts, with many more affected by knock-on effects, such as higher food prices. In addition, the depletion in hydropower reservoirs that had started in 2013, meant that, in 2021, 213 million people, reliant on hydropower for two-thirds of their electricity, were at increased risk of electricity supply default. Urgent policy responses for water resilience are therefore needed to tackle the consequences of climate uncertainties.

Worldwide, infrastructure plays a key role in responding to the pressures on water resources and enhancing water security. Those pressures will continue to increase in the coming decades because of demographic change, economic growth, pollution, land-use change, ecosystem degradation, and climate change. Brazil is no exception. The country made good progress in identifying and addressing challenges, funding and maintaining infrastructure based on public investment. However, the funding model has reached a limit, while technical skills and capacity, and stakeholder engagement need to be improved to further progress and move from a risk to a resilient approach. This chapter offers options to achieve these goals.

This chapter provides a deep dive into the specific case of the Piancó-Piranhas Açu River Basin as a testbed to address broader water governance and financing challenges in Brazil. Due to its economic and hydrological characteristics, the Piancó-Piranhas Açu River Basin is fragile in terms of securing present and future water supply. Despite a robust institutional and legal structure, implementation gaps remain in ensuring that governance arrangements fulfil water management functions. This chapter suggests options to improve multi-level governance at the basin level and economic instruments in view of the implementation of the São Francisco Integration Project (PISF), which will transfer water to the basin and bring substantial changes to the water management landscape.

Infrastructure development should be accompanied by effective regulatory oversight and monitoring. The 2020 Sanitation Law of Brazil brought changes to ANA’s regulatory and operational role while raising several challenges, from how it can adapt its mandate and develop its capacity and resources, to how it can embrace issuing standards for service and sanitation, oversight of sub-national authorities and promoting the regionalisation of service provision. This chapter summarises the implications and challenges of the new Sanitation Law and provides examples from international practices as well as relevant OECD normative guidance.