SABESP (Nature-Based Solutions for Water Management)
São Paulo, Brazil
Description
Situated in the population dense, water scarce and wildfire prone area of São Paulo, Saneamento Básico do Estado de São Paulo (SABESP) faces increasing pressure to supply sufficient and good quality water to its 26.7 million customers. In 2015, Southeast Brazil grappled with its worst drought in nearly a century. Increased rainfall in the following years provided some relief to water and sanitation suppliers like SABESP, but threats to long-term water supplies will likely continue. To protect and restore their catchment areas from degradation, SABESP designed an NBS program that prioritizes reforestation and engages water users in coordinated conservation efforts across the watersheds it depends on. In the São Paulo Metropolitan Area, the Cantareira system is the most important watershed. Composed of six reservoirs, Cantareira is one of the largest water supply systems in the world and responsible for supplying water to almost half the city of São Paulo. The wellbeing of this area is highly jeopardized by land conversion to support agricultural, pastoral, industrial and urban expansion. These activities have already consumed over 70% of the original forests that comprised Cantareira’s watershed areas (Abell et.al, 2017)
Challenges
SABESP’s catchment protection efforts stem back to the 1980s and were focused on protection and restoration of SABESP’s own property areas. The 2015 drought, combined with the potential for prolonged strains on water supplies, prompted the development of a new program in 2017 called Cinturão Verde dos Mananciais Metropolitanos (Green Belt of Metropolitan Watersheds). To design a new approach to water management, SABESP’s Water Resources Department drew on experiences from The Nature Conservancy’s São Paulo Water Fund, technical studies on the value of investing in natural infrastructure in São Paulo (Ozment et al, 2018), and the work of local academic institutions. The Cinturão Verde program delivers on SABESP’s mandate to go beyond the traditional utility role of protecting owned assets to adopting collective action approaches across the catchment for ensuring water security.
References
Abell, R., et al. (2017). Beyond the Source: The Environmental, Economic and Community Benefits of Source Water Protection.The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA, USA.
Benini, Rubens. (2019). The Nature Conservancy Brazil & Latin America. Roots for Growth: Why protecting and restoring forests is one of the best thing any government can do for its people.
Ozment, S., Feltran-Barbieri, R., Hamel, P., Gray, E., Ribeiro, J. B., Barrêto, S. R., & Valente, T. P. (2018). Natural infrastructure in São Paulo’s water system. Natural infrastructure in São Paulo’s water system.
SABESP (2018).Beyond water. The environmental preservation initiatives in one of the world’s largest urban areas, the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo. Second edition. November 2018. Available at (Accessed June 26, 2019)