The area of territorial scope of the Semear Program includes the semiarid zones of eight states of Northeast Brazil: Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Pernambuco, Piauí, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte and Sergipe.
Northeast Semiarid: Characteristics and Social Indicators
The Brazilian semiarid region extends to nine states in the Northeast, in Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo in the Southeast. Its territorial extension is of 969,589.4 km2 – which is equivalent to 11.53% of the total territorial dimension of the country – according to the Ministry of National Integration’s official data. A total of 22,598 million of people live in the semiarid region, which corresponds to 11.85% of the Brazilian population, and 42.57% of the Northeast population (IBGE, 2010)1.
A great cultural diversity, knowledge, stories, social technologies and potentials of nature mark the Northeast semiarid region. However, social inequalities also make up this scenario and are reflected in the daily lives of women, men and young people living in the region. The states of the Northeast semiarid region are those with the lowest Municipal Human Development Indexes (IDHM) of the country. That´s what tells the Atlas of Human Development in Brazil 20132 .
The states that comprise the territorial scope of Semear Program display the following MHDI as follows: Alagoas (0.631), Bahia (0.660); Ceará (0.682); Pernambuco (0.673); Piauí (0.646); Rio Grande do Norte (0,684), Sergipe (0.665); and Paraíba (0.658).
(1) IBGE Census 2010. Data gathered in the Synopsis of the Census for the Brazilian Semiarid Region.
(2) UNDP, Atlas of Human Development in Brazil. 2013.