Harvesting Underdevelopment: Exploring the Water–Food Nexus in Brazilian Municipalities

Efforts to promote human development through agriculture highlight issues that require balanced approaches, considering socio-environmental factors, including equitable water allocation in regions with significant inequalities. This study aims to assess human development disparities across Brazilian regions, particularly in municipalities with high water consumption for irrigation in agriculture and livestock watering. Using public data from 2007 and 2016, a total of 300 municipalities were selected each year for analysis based on water use types. The study compared groups using the Firjan Index of Municipal Development (FIMD) as a measure of human development, employing the Kruskal–Wallis test with a 95% confidence level. We found statistically significant differences in FIMD distribution across all of the groups studied. We also verified that a set of municipalities in the Southeast did not experience significant advancements in development between 2007 and 2016, despite having high water allocations for livestock watering. Additionally, intense water use for irrigation was insufficient to elevate less advantaged regions, such as the Northeast, where half of the municipalities were classified with moderately low values in both years. The challenges in this water–food nexus study highlight the need for more integrated policies to ensure greater justice in human development and in the distribution of natural resource exploitation for agribusiness income.