Policy, Planning and Institutional Aspects of Rainwater Catchment and Management in the Rural Area of Semi-Arid Brazil for Climate Change Adaptation

This paper deals with rainwater catchment and management programs to adapt to the semi-arid climate and to climate change in the rural area of semi-arid Brazil, a region with 969,599 km2 and 9 million inhabitants in the rural area. In this region rainwater management has its origins in NGO initiatives, first for drinking purposes and later also for agriculture. These initiatives are being canalized by ASA the Brazilian Semi-Arid NGO Network into two programs, called P1MC and P1+2, which take rainwater catchment and management as integrated part of Living in Harmony with the Semi-Arid Climate. The goal of P1MC the One Million Cisterns Program is to supply safe drinking water for 1 million rural households. More than 261,000 cisterns with 16,000 liters have been constructed until now through the program. P1+2- the Program One Piece of Land and Two Types of Water, signifies that every rural family should own one piece of land (1), large enough to guarantee sustainable livelihood and have two (2) types of water, one for human consumption (already supplied by P1MC) and the other one for food production (all types of vegetables, corn, rice, beans or frui