1P 1+2: Rainwater Harvesting Program for Livestock and Agriculture in the Brazilian Semi-Arid Tropics

P1+2 (Program One Piece of Land and Two Types of Water) is an example of “Mainstream-ing Rainwater Harvesting ” in the context of integrated water management in the Brazilian Semi-Arid Tropics in both policy and practice. P1+2 signifies that every rural family should own one piece of land (1), large enough to produce food and live in a sustainable way and, two (2) types of water, one for human consumption and the other one for food production. With 100,000 cisterns constructed, the provision of drought-proof drinking water for one mil-lion households is already underway. There remains to ensure water security for livestock raising and agriculture. Besides the use of green water conserving technologies such as con-tour tillage, vegetative soil protection and use of manure, other experiences have been devel-oped that provide a guaranteed water supply for agriculture, which include cisterns for sup-plemental irrigation of vegetable gardens, for poultry raising and beekeeping, shallow wells, rock cisterns for water for livestock, subsurface dams, rainwater catchments diverted from roads, etc. After a survey of positive experiences of these techniques carried out by NGOs and an identification of conditions for their implementation, it is hoped that the Brazilian Gov-ernment will include P1+2 in different development programs