VELOPMENT IN THE BRAZILIAN SEMI-ARID TROP- ICS (BSATS)- AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

During the 1990ies, especially NGOs and grass-root organizations working in the Bra-zilian Semiarid Tropics (BSATs) have focused on rainwater catchment systems as an essen-tial contribution to people's living under the region's climatic conditions with rainfall only dur-ing a few months. Rainwater catchment is seen as one important factor of sustainable devel-opment of the BSATs, called "living in harmony with the semi-arid climate. " The organizations not only teach appropriate technologies, but first speak about water and climate and then introduce rainwater catchment systems and look at the economic and socio-political condi-tions of the people involved. There has to be created a political willingness to build an infra-structure such as access to land, animal raising, rain-fed agriculture, water supply, education, health service, streets and commercialization of local products. A joint project was elaborated by the NGO Network ASA called Project for 1 Million Cisterns (P1MC) to be executed by the civilian society in a decentralized manner (at the community, municipal, micro-region, state and regional levels). At a fist stage, 12,400 cisterns where built by ASA and funded by the Ministry of Environment, and further 21,000 cisterns are planned until the end of this year