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LOCAL SPOTLIGHT
Cantareira System, São Paulo, Brazil—Reforestation for water security mitigates climate change
Photo: © Adriano Gambarini
South America
The challenge
Jaguari Reservoir
Cachoeira Reservoir
Jacareí Reservoir
Atibainha Reservoir
Pedro Beicht - Cachoeira
da Graça Reservoir
Biritiba Mirim
Reservoir
Jundiaí
Paraitinga
Ponte Nova
Taiaçupeba
Billings Reservoir
Guarapiranga Reservoir
Population density
Low
0
Above: Brazil’s first forest conserved through Payments for Environmental Services in São Paulo’s Cantareira System.
Left: Preparing tree seedlings for planting.
With a population of around 20 million people, São Paulo is the most populated metropolitan region in Brazil and the sixth largest on the
planet. The city is the center of Brazil’s financial, service and industrial sectors, making up more than 20 percent of the country’s GDP.
Unfortunately, it is also one of the top water-stressed cities in Latin America.
For decades São Paulo’s most important watersheds—that of the Piracicaba, Capivari and Jundiaí rivers (PCJ) and Upper Tietê River—have
experienced severe deforestation, which impacts water availability and contributes to climate change. Already, São Paulo consumes 4
percent more water than is available in its rivers (a deficit of 3,000 liters per second), and by 2025 this is expected to increase by 16 percent
if immediate large-scale actions are not taken to address the root causes of the crisis. While investments in traditional gray infrastructure are
critical, they are costly and will be more effective with parallel efforts to reduce water use and waste and restore watershed landscapes.
Paiva Castro Reservoir
SÃO PAULO
Photo: © Scott Waren
High
50 km
Approximately 46 percent of the water consumed by the São Paulo metropolitan area comes from the Cantareira System, which encompasses
four sub watersheds of the Piracicaba River (Jaguari, Jacareí, Cachoeira, Atibainha) and one from the Alto Tietê River (Juqueri), and is one of
the largest water supply systems in the world. Comprised of six reservoirs, it sits in the biodiverse and highly threatened Atlantic Forest. The
Cantareira System’s watersheds have already lost over 70 percent of their original forest as a result of land-use changes to support agriculture,
pasture lands and urban expansion. Restoring natural vegetation in critical areas of the watersheds will not only help filter out sediments and
pollutants to improve water quality, but it is expected to contribute to natural flow regulation and improve water availability during the dry season.
Brazil’s water funds—in some cases known as water producer projects—are focused on
implementing or maintaining natural infrastructure to ensure water provision for water users.
The Nature Conservancy and its partners are promoting this scheme to improve water
security for 12 urban centers in the country. One of these sites is São Paulo and its
metropolitan area, where early projects started as pilots in 2005. The first pilot project was
in Extrema, a municipality that encompasses many of the PCJ headwaters and became a
broadly recognized case.
The priority of the São Paulo Water Fund has been to recover the natural functions of
the watersheds to improve water security and conserve biodiversity. With the goal of
decreasing sedimentation by 50 percent in the Cantareira system, approximately 13,000
hectares were identified for reforestation and natural regeneration, specifically in riparian
zones, water recharge areas and steep slopes—all of which would be protected by law for
their importance to water quality and for delivering a multitude of other benefits.
The scale at which forests would be restored and protected was substantial enough to
explore the addition of climate change mitigation as a co-benefit of the projects in São Paulo.
In 2008, the Dow Chemical Company and Foundation supported The Nature Conservancy
in a 3-year pilot project with two main goals: to restore 350 hectares in the watershed of
the Cachoeira Reservoir, one of the six reservoirs of the Cantareira System; and to develop a
forest carbon project that could enable the inclusion of other carbon initiatives throughout
the Cantareira system.
In 2012, a contract for Payment for Ecosystem Services for Carbon (PES-Carbon) was
signed with a landowner participating in the Extrema Water Conservation Project. This was
a pilot and pioneer experience for The Nature Conservancy. The agreement compensated
the farmer for both water production and carbon storage. By following the Verified Carbon
Standard (VCS) methodology, The Nature Conservancy was able to identify the carbon
sequestration rates for reforestation in that particular region: each reforested hectare in
the Cantareira System would be able to store around 102 metric tonnes of carbon over
30 years (375 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent) (Figure 3.7). Considering these
parameters and the plan to scale the São Paulo Water Fund (a target of restoring around
14,200 hectares by 2025), expected additional benefits for climate change mitigation
generated by the restoration activities are around 942,500 tonnes of carbon (or 3.46
million tonnes of CO2 equivalent). In the case of the Extrema Water Conserver Project,
the carbon sequestration benefits are also being used to engage new partners, such as
companies looking to have a sustainable supply chain.
The development of the carbon project was an important step in identifying opportunities
to adapt and implement this co-benefit for other water producer projects in Brazil.
The benefits of water funds go beyond water security and working with partners reinforces
that natural infrastructure can provide benefits for climate change mitigation, biodiversity
conservation and local communities.
Estimated annual net carbon removal potential through forest restoration for the São Paulo
Water Fund over 30 years
Annual net carbon removal potential (tC/yr)
Action and opportunity
40,000
35,000
30,000
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
0
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
24
26
30
Figure 3.7. Net carbon removal data within planned restoration sites estimated based on parameters from Borgo and Tiepolo (2012).
SÃO PAULO DASHBOARD
Water fund
start date
Number of upstream
participants to date
Number of potential
downstream beneficiaries
Number of
partners to date
Primary
funding sources
2005*
221
More than
5,000,000
17
Private
Public
*2005 is when the first Extrema Conservador das Aguas project started.
28
Years
Activities
Anticipated co-benefits