“Coping With Drought”: A Contribution of the Semi-Arid Articulation/ASA for Sustainable Development

Abstract

The Brazilian semi-arid region poses huge challenges to sustainable development: the edapho-climaticcharacteristics, undoubtedly, but also, and much more so, the prevalence of a policy based on greenrevolution principles and incentives to agribusiness, on one hand, and on assistentialism for the poor inthe countryside, on the other. Against the “fighting draught” paradigm – carried on by the constructionof large water reservoirs and water distribution through tank trucks, leading to dependence, and its usefor irrigation, harming the environment – family farmers and their institutions, organized by the Semi-Arid Articulation/ASA, complain about the “living with draught” principle. They restore and promoteexperiences born from popular knowledge and improved through contact with scientific knowledge, and change them into references to propose a different public policy model to the public authorities. This ishow the P1MC – Programa de Formação e Mobilização para Convivência no Semi-Árido: um Milhãode Cisternas Rurais (Education and Mobilization Program for Semi-Arid Living: One Million RuralCisterns) was born, followed by P1+2 – Programa Uma Terra e Duas Águas (One Earth/Land and TwoWaters Program). The strategy used by the farmers to diversify activities and create water reserves, forage,and seeds, and agro-ecological principles, are at the basis of the development model proposed byASA. The methodology developed fosters farmer protagonism and its organization, safeguarding thesustainability of the process.