Case Studies

Brazil is home to incredible species and ecosystem biodiversity. This includes its resources of freshwater, such as the Amazon river and the Pantanal – the planet's largest continental wetland. Although it has around 14% of the world’s available freshwater, Brazil still has almost 40 million people who have no access to clean water. In 2002, under the Investing in Nature programme, WWF started Water for Life – the largest project focusing on freshwater in Brazil that is coordinated by a non-governmental organisation.

Using a combination of grass roots education, community engagement and government lobbying, the project promoted the vision of water as a living system to be preserved long-term for the good of all. The three main focuses were:

• To protect Brazil’s waterways;
• To improve the quality of drinking water;
• To reduce waste.

Community involvement included rejuvenating the ‘Adopt a Spring’ programme, encouraging the public to care for local springs. Under Water for Life, the number of adopted springs rose from 21 to 80 and the Brazilian government decided to take the project nationwide.

Wider coverage was obtained by the Water for Life travelling exhibition. This focused on educating children about freshwater conservation and was visited by more than 45,000 people. Two hundred volunteers, including 40 HSBC employees, were trained to run the exhibition.

The project informed more than eight million Brazilians about the relationship between poor water and land use, and problems like flooding, water shortages and water-borne diseases. These programmes and government policy changes have helped Brazil make progress towards meeting the UN’s Millennium Development Goal to halve the number of people with no access to drinking water and environmental sanitation.