Brazil: The transposition of Rio Sao Francisco threatens rights to water and access to land of indigenous, afro descendants, fisher folk communities and smallholders.

Semiarid Northeast Brazil is an interesting area for agro-business – close to the European market. Irrigation water, however, is missing. For this matter a pharaonic project has been designed to connect the Rio Sao Francisco with other rivers in the semiarid Northeast. The project will violate the rights to food and water of the project affected communities and marginalize peasant farmers in the Northeast. Many local communities resist. Official reports of government sources (Report 15/2007 –IBAMA) state that at least 845 families will be removed from their livelihoods.

According to the public ministry’s official report (18/2001), at least 7.138 members of indigenous tribes will be directly affected by the transposition, and at least additional 34 indigenous lands and 153 afro descendant commu-nities could as well be affected. Those people were not taken into consideration by the government’s Environmental Im-pact Reports and the real social damage of the transposition remains uncalculat-ed by them. On November 27, Dom Cappio, a local bishop linked to the resistance movement, has taken up a hunger strike against this project in reaction to the Brazilian government having de-ployed the army for construction work on the transposition.