2. INTRODUCTION
The growth of the world population and consequently the demand for food, fiber and energy has led to the degradation of soil and water resources leading to food insecurity, malnutrition and several socio-economic issues. Approximately 33% of the world’s soils show some type of degradation (FAO, 2017). The inequality and unsustainable path of growth raised important concerns about the future of our planet and society thus evolving the approach of sustainable development. Since then, several countries has strongly committed efforts to reduce poverty and hunger as well as conserve and preserve natural resources while increasing economic growth (United Nations, 2015). In Brazil, the past agriculture cycles based on unsustainable land management practices, such as deforestation, slash and burn, intensive and inappropriate use of mechanization, pesticides and fertilizers increased erosion processes upon a diversity of fragile across biomes and regions (Miranda, et al., 2015). Disperse public policies were undertaken aiming to effectively reverse or prevent the progress of degradation and improve degraded lands recovery (TCU, 2015). To meet the growing demand for food it is imperative to take efforts towards the reinsertion of degraded lands into agricultural production systems. This also represents a great opportunity to increase national food production on a sustainable basis.
Brazil plays an important hole on global environmental guidelines and commitments, showing leadership in key international strategies and agreements towards sustainable development goals. Since 1980´s the environmental sector in Brazil has been strengthened and structured with policies and plans to support natural resources conservation, preservation and restoration. However, these efforts were made regardless agriculture environmental issues and from challenges and constrains faced by both agribusiness and family farms sectors (Leonard et al., 2011).
To contain the advance of soil erosion in agricultural exploitation, past policies such as the National Soil Conservation Plan in 1975 through the Decree nº 76470 (Brasil, 1975) and the National Watershed Program in 1987 for through the Decree nº 94.076 (Brasil, 1987) were created. Both policies were undertaken in a short period of implementation thus not producing expressive results. Currently, only few states of the federation are still running the National Watershed Program without any federal support or coordination. More recently, the Brazil´s National Soil Survey and Interpretation Program (PronaSolos) were approved in 2018 through the Decree nº 9.414 to improve the design of future polices addressing soil and water sustainable management issues (Brasil, 2018). In face of the importance of the agriculture sector to Brazil´s economy it was highly recommended by the country´s accounting bodies the design of a national policy to effectively enhance the adoption of soil and water sustainable management practices in agriculture systems.
The objective of this research is to support the construction of the National Plan for Soil and Water Sustainable Management (PNMSA), contrasting other relevant public policies with six main thematic axis to address soil and water sustainability: Legislation, Prevention, Conservation, Recovery, Monitoring and Integration with relevant stakeholders. Firstly, the actors involved in each of these policies are analyzed, and secondly the degree of correspondence and attention of each of these policies to each of the axis proposed for the PNMSA is analyzed. We hope that this work provides relevant information for the future participatory process of PNMSA construction, offering systematic inputs for its discussion.