Política de irrigação do Brasil

Resumo

The purpose of this paper is to supply a brief overall view of the methods which are being adopted in Brazil for studying and solving the problems of utilization of water resources for agricultural development.

Irrigation has been a constant concern of the Federal Government, as is witnessed by the latest pruriannual plans, relating to the 1964/66, 1968/70 and 1972/74 periods, for development of the country.

The first of these plans included irrigation among the measures for technological modernization, envisaging the elimination of the relative backwardness of the agricultural sector. The second plan, pursuing this orientation and in- tensifying the governmental concern for this field, laid down that greater resources should be applied for the accellerated execution of priority irrigation projects, chiefly in the North East. Finally, the present "First National Plan for Economic and Social Development (1972/74)" includes irrigation as one of the main technological tools for attaining the strategic goals of the agricultural sector. To complement this set of measures, and to make them operational, the Brazilian Government instituted, in 1970,through Decree-Law 1,106/70 the Programe for of National Integration, and alloted to it, for urgent application,resources of the magnitude of US$45,000,000 - part of which should be used for executing a programme of development of irrigation agriculture in North East.

From the programmatic standpoint,the central concern of the Government in this field has been that of formulating anation- al irrigation policy, at one time flexible and realistic adaptable to regional differences, and meshed in with the other government policies. This concern is reflected in the effort made for drawing up the Pluriannual Irrigation Programme, concluded in 1971.

Concern with the effective implementation of irrigation in Brazil led the Government to create the institutional tools required to facilitate this process. One reflection of this concern is the fact that since 1967, when administrative reform alloted responsibility for irrigation to the Ministry of the Interior, the Government has endeavoured to coordinate the actions of the different Ministries which are either di- rectly or indirectly relevant to irrigation.

In 1968, a concrete step was taken towards this goal, with the creation, through Decree 63,775/68, of the Executive Group of Irrigation for Agricultural Development (GEIDA), composed of representatives of Ministries of Interior, Agriculture, Mines and Energy, Finance, Health, and Planning and General Coordination, with the general responsability of planning, orienting and supervising the integrated action of the systems of federal bodies in the sectors of ingineering, agriculture and credit.

From the organizatiomal standpoint, the creation of GEIDA constituted an important step towards the inter-ministerial coordination which was required in the field of irrigation. From the internal point of view, the existence of GEIDA has permitted better coordination, between the bodies under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior, and facilitated the exchange of experience and the development of technical staffs with well-defined orientation in the sector of irrigation.