In Brazil, although the local water resource management (WRM) system has shown progress, many improvements are still required. The Water Framework Directive (WFD), the European WRM model, recognizes that the ecological quality of ecosystems is the most effective way to ensure sufficient availability of water in adequate quality standards. In this paper WFD will be critically reviewed in order to understand its principles to assess the difficulties of its application in Brazil. It was observed that there is scientific capacity to incorporate new instruments of WFD, mainly in São Paulo, however, there must be adequate sanitation and monitoring systems and especially political decision and rigor in the application of these new tools, otherwise the incorporation of the WFD is unviable.
Management; water resources; sanitation; monitoring; WFD
