During the 1980s, Ceará State’s urban population grew by 3.6% a year, exceeding both the regional and national averages. Fortaleza was the second fastest growing metropolitan area in Brazil between 1980 and 1991, when the population reached 2.3 million. Much of the growth resulted from migration of low-income families from rural areas to the outskirts of the city.

As a result of population growth and other factors, Fortaleza and other urban areas in Ceará were faced with increasingly serious environmental problems, including water and air pollution, poor drainage, and inadequate solid waste disposal. Low-income populations living in informal settlements in flood-prone areas and/or areas with poor sanitation services and housing were particularly vulnerable to these problems. More than a third of all housing units in Ceará were not connected to a piped water system, while more than half had inadequate sewage and solid waste disposal.

The Ceará Urban Development and Water Resources Management Project sought to:

• Build local government management and institutional capacity;
   
• Improve living conditions in selected poor urban neighborhoods through infrastructure investments;
   
• Increase efficiency of water use through water basin planning and management; and
   
• Provide reliable, economic and safe water supply to communities in critical need through investments in water storage, conveyance and distribution infrastructure.

Selected outcomes: 

• Provided direct municipal management capacity building in 44 municipalities in the interior, resulting in increased revenues for municipalities.
   
• Upgraded informal settlements and constructed new housing for 37,000 families.
   
• Constructed/financed municipal infrastructure projects in 16 municipalities.
   
• Constructed 26 ABC centers for youth and young adults and day-care centers.
   
• Built/recuperated 39 dams and constructed 335 km of water conveyance systems.
   
• Prepared regional development plans, which are the basis for a follow-on, regional economic development project – Cidades do Ceará.