2. INTRODUCTION
The growth of the world population and consequently the demand for food,
fiber and energy has led to the degradation of soil and water resources
leading to food insecurity, malnutrition and several socio-economic
issues. Approximately 33% of the world’s soils show some type of
degradation (FAO, 2017). The inequality and unsustainable path of growth
raised important concerns about the future of our planet and society
thus evolving the approach of sustainable development. Since then,
several countries has strongly committed efforts to reduce poverty and
hunger as well as conserve and preserve natural resources while
increasing economic growth (United Nations, 2015). In Brazil, the past
agriculture cycles based on unsustainable land management practices,
such as deforestation, slash and burn, intensive and inappropriate use
of mechanization, pesticides and fertilizers increased erosion processes
upon a diversity of fragile across biomes and regions (Miranda, et al.,
2015). Disperse public policies were undertaken aiming to effectively
reverse or prevent the progress of degradation and improve degraded
lands recovery (TCU, 2015). To meet the growing demand for food it is
imperative to take efforts towards the reinsertion of degraded lands
into agricultural production systems. This also represents a great
opportunity to increase national food production on a sustainable basis.
Brazil plays an important hole on global environmental guidelines and
commitments, showing leadership in key international strategies and
agreements towards sustainable development goals. Since 1980´s the
environmental sector in Brazil has been strengthened and structured with
policies and plans to support natural resources conservation,
preservation and restoration. However, these efforts were made
regardless agriculture environmental issues and from challenges and
constrains faced by both agribusiness and family farms sectors (Leonard
et al., 2011).
To contain the advance of soil erosion in agricultural exploitation,
past policies such as the National Soil Conservation Plan in 1975
through the Decree nº 76470 (Brasil, 1975) and the National Watershed
Program in 1987 for through the Decree nº 94.076 (Brasil, 1987) were
created. Both policies were undertaken in a short period of
implementation thus not producing expressive results. Currently, only
few states of the federation are still running the National Watershed
Program without any federal support or coordination. More recently, the
Brazil´s National Soil Survey and Interpretation Program (PronaSolos)
were approved in 2018 through the Decree nº
9.414
to improve the design of future polices addressing soil and water
sustainable management issues (Brasil, 2018). In face of the importance
of the agriculture sector to Brazil´s economy it was highly recommended
by the country´s accounting bodies the design of a national policy to
effectively enhance the adoption of soil and water sustainable
management practices in agriculture systems.
The objective of this research is to support the construction of the
National Plan for Soil and Water Sustainable Management (PNMSA),
contrasting other relevant public policies with six main thematic axis
to address soil and water sustainability: Legislation, Prevention,
Conservation, Recovery, Monitoring and Integration with relevant
stakeholders. Firstly, the actors involved in each of these policies are
analyzed, and secondly the degree of correspondence and attention of
each of these policies to each of the axis proposed for the PNMSA is
analyzed. We hope that this work provides relevant information for the
future participatory process of PNMSA construction, offering systematic
inputs for its discussion.