Guaratinguetá's Produtor de Água — Municipal Watershed Payments for Ecosystem Services (Brazil)

Guaratinguetá is a mid-sized city (around 120,000 people) in São Paulo state's Paraíba Valley, Brazil, whose public water utility SAEG draws from the Ribeirão Guaratinguetá watershed. Since 2019 the municipal Secretaria de Agricultura has run "Produtor de Água," a locally adapted version of Brazil's national, ANA-backed Programa Produtor de Água, paying rural landowners for watershed-protective land management.

Farmers who enrol, via registration in the national Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), receive annual per-hectare payments of 10 to 30 UFESP (a São Paulo state fiscal reference unit), capped at 30 hectares per property, in exchange for riparian-forest restoration, native-forest conservation, soil-conservation practices and installation of biodigester septic systems to cut point-source pollution. The programme is funded and delivered through a public-private partnership between the municipality, chemicals manufacturer BASF, the Fundação Eco+, water utility SAEG, and university-extension students from FEG/UNESP.

As of the programme's 2025 relaunch edital, it had reached 67 rural properties, recovered 65 springs (nascentes) and restored more than 120 hectares of riparian preservation area. These are self-reported enrolment and output figures from the municipality rather than independently verified water-quality or streamflow measurements, and no third-party monitoring data on biodiversity or carbon outcomes has been published.

Read the full analysis: https://www.meon.com.br/noticias/vale-do-paraiba-regiao/programa-produtor-de-agua-abre-inscricoes-em-guaratingueta