The state of Ceará, Northeast Brazil, sits squarely in the semi-arid tropics and is subject to extreme climate variability and recurrent drought. The rural population, most rainfed farmers, is largely located beneath the poverty line and suffers extreme vulnerability to drought. Ever since 500,000 inhabitants succumbed to the multi-year drought of 1877-79, the government has sought solutions that would reduce the impacts of severe drought. However, public programs have had little long-term success and have tended to reinforce the structural inequities of a highly clientilistic and stratified rural society. Much of the public effort has focused on technology and science-based strategies, such as the construction of large reservoirs, water transfers, cloud-seeding, and more recently on climate forecasting. Nonetheless, as the El-Niño drought of 1998 demonstrated, the vulnerability of the rural population remains critically high.

In 1997, BARA faculty with colleagues from the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Latin American Studies initiated a NOAA-funded project in Ceará to examine how policy-makers and society in general had derived benefits from a heavy investment in a state-based climate forecasting capacity. BARA faculty and students conducted a survey of rural families to assess the vulnerability of the local population and to document the use of climate information. Based on these results, the project evolved to focus upon the ability of local governments to use the forecasts and to design local-level preparedness plans for drought. The project developed a diagnostic tool that used GIS as the organizational framework for information gathered at community level using participatory research methods. From this information, GIS vulnerability maps were created and used to elaborate specific local plans that would guide public decision-making in a transparent and accountable way.

The result of this research has been to introduce an unprecedented grassroots planning model into public decision-making. Using eight local governments (municípios) as pilot participants, the Government of Ceará has adopted this local planning methodology which effectively provides an alternative to the clientilist-based approaches of the past. Communities have discovered a new sense of voice in public affairs and have actually seen public investment in the priority areas identified by the communities themselves.