In a joint effort, the National Water Agency (ANA), the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and the Secretariat of Water Resources and Environmental Quality of the Ministry of the Environment (SRHQ/MMA) present the first results from the Environmental-Economic Accounts for Water (EEA-W) in Brazil. Such integration relies on the technical support and close collaboration of the Secretariat of Biodiversity (SBIO) of the Ministry of the Environment, and the German Cooperation for Sustainable Development through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.
The Environmental-Economic Accounts for Water are considered in the context of production and dissemination of information related to the balance between water resources availability and water demands from the economic sectors at a national scale, according to the standardized methodology designed by the SEEA-Water (System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for Water) of the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD).
The consolidation of different databases, direct and indirect estimates of sectoral water demands, and methods used to organize the information, allowed for calculating EEA-W time series (assets, supplies, uses, and hybrid accounts) for Brazil in the period between 2013 and 2015.
The results present strategic information that aims to support sectoral planning and management actions, as well as economic and water resources actions, by diagnosing how water is used by the Brazilian economic sector. This is done by organizing the information that shows evidence of the interactions between the economy and the environment, related to references in sustainable development and other public policies.
In that sense, the environmental-economic accounts are a key tool for effective public management of natural resources. Particularly, EEA-W, which integrates physical indicators with monetary indicators, can influence actions and public policies when it comes to integrated management of physical and monetary aspects of that resource that is vital for life.
In this publication, Environmental-Economic Accounting for Water in Brazil 2013-2015, first the Environmental-Economic Accounts (EEA) are defined, emphasizing their context and key applications. In the second chapter, the databases and the methodology used to organize EEA-W in Brazil are presented. In the following chapter, the results of the Accounts, encompassing assets, supplies and uses, and hybrid data (hydrology + economy), as well as the indicators derived from the Accounts can be found. Finally, final considerations on the application and improvement of EEA-W in Brazil are presented.