Devastating Drought Strikes Brazil - Again

The government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso is implementing emergency measures to confront the crisis in the Brazilian northeast, where hunger has already prompted the looting of local businesses.

RIO DE JANEIRO - The approximately 21 million Brazilians who live in the country's arid and impoverished northeast are already feeling the effects of a new drought cycle, which will only worsen in September, causing more hunger and prompting many to abandon their lands.

''We already lost 90 percent of the bean and maize harvest, and the water for the livestock will last just two or three months,'' small farmer Francisco Jacó, of Ouricuri in the state of Pernambuco, told Tierramérica.

Jacó, one of the leaders of the Ouricuri Rural Workers Syndicate, has a 30-hectare farm where he lives with his six children and 10 grandchildren. His deepest fear is that the meteorological forecasts for ''two more years of drought'' will bear out.

The worst phase of the drought is yet to come, lasting from September to December, when it will be difficult to find water for human consumption, warned Expedito Rufino, adviser for the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG), operating in Pernambuco.

Lack of food has already led local inhabitants to plunder businesses in several towns. The government responded by setting up a drought survival commission with the authority to implement emergency measures intended to alleviate the population's suffering.

On June 21, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso announced the designation of 4.0 billion 'reais' (some 1.7 billion dollars) for aid programs targeting 1,000 municipalities in the drought-stricken northeast.

Raul Jungmann, minister of Agrarian Development and coordinator of the assistance, reported that the 730,000 small farmers who lost their harvest would receive an insurance stipend equal to half a minimum monthly wage (39 dollars), and unemployed rural workers would receive a 26-dollar monthly subsidy.

The national government said it will enhance certain programs aimed at the rural population in the drought area, such as basic sanitation works, and the school stipend program, which assures 15 reais (6.60 dollars) monthly for the families of schoolchildren ages seven to 14.

The Cardoso administration also announced it would begin distributing water (by tanker trucks) and food baskets in 1,000 municipalities and that the primary school meal program would continue through the two-week vacation period in July.

But some groups maintain that the Brazilian government repeats the same discourse every time a new drought hits the northeast, but does not comply with its promises for helping the people survive in the region's semi-arid climate.

''The measures are insufficient'' because their benefits do not reach even half of the two million families affected, and the financial sums are extremely low, far less than in previous emergencies, charged Manuel dos Santos, CONTAG president. He predicts the looting will continue.

The government is taking ''compensatory'' actions, which contradict the promise to replace the traditional assistance measures with definitive solutions that would make it possible to get through the drought, said the union leader.

The Cardoso administration lost two chances when it did not carry out ''the promised investments in the region's hydraulic infrastructure'' following the droughts of 1989-1993 and 1998-1999, according to Dos Santos.

The authorities continue to follow the practices of the past, the same ones they claim to detest, he added.

But there are effective solutions, which have already been proven by peasant farmers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as tanks for storing rain water, deep wells, and the use of small dams, pointed out the CONTAG president.

Dos Santos mentioned his own experience as a small farmer in Serra Talhada, in Pernambuco's interior. In 1996 he created a mud pit that never dried up because it was located over impermeable soil, he explained.

Ongoing investment is needed, agree unionists and experts, like agronomist Silvia Picchioni, chief coordinator of ASA, a network of nearly 500 rural unions, NGOs, churches and international development agencies that promotes strategies for enduring the periodic droughts that affect Brazil's semi-arid northeast.

ASA's coordinated actions have two basic premises, says Picchioni: the conservation and sustainable use of the region's natural resources and the rejection of monopolistic power over lands and water resources.

The first joint project of the network is the construction, over the next five years, of a million water-storage tanks. The implementation of the initiative has to be gradual because it requires training the population to collect and conserve water in appropriate conditions for human consumption, explained the ASA director.

The program has government backing but is not a state entity, and is run by civil society groups, some of which have already distributed nearly 50,000 cisterns in the northeast over the last 15 years.

The Caatinga de Ouricuri Center, for example, has been working since 1986 to promote alternatives so that the region's residents are not forced by drought to abandon their lands or to depend on government assistance.

Tanks to hold potable water for humans, mud pits to provide water for livestock, small dams for irrigating fields, and the digging of deep wells are options for ensuring the availability of water - and survival - during dry periods, pointed out Hermes Gonçalves Monteiro, a Caatinga leader.

Some other focus areas of the NGO include promoting appropriate agricultural technology, the raising of sheep and goats, and training young people in agro-ecology.

No single approach is the solution, but a combination of initiatives that have been proven - and approved - by the local population can allow us to coexist with this semi-arid climate, maintains Monteiro.

* Mario Osava is an IPS correspondent.