Brazil's huge river diversion project divides opinion

Outside his house by the Sao Francisco river, Emanoel de Souza toys with the skin of a crocodile he hunted a month earlier.

"There are plenty out there. You leave a cow's heart on a hook by the river, and by morning a crocodile will have bitten," he smiles.

The meat makes for a good meal and the skin provides an amusing decoration.

But Mr de Souza gets much more than crocodiles from the Sao Francisco.

The river also provides water for him to farm fish and rice. The profits of the last harvest alone paid for a new motorbike.

This makes him one of the lucky ones. Just a few kilometres away, out of reach of the Sao Francisco's water, Raquel Torres has lost a crop of beans and maize due to lack of rain.

"This is the second consecutive year. There is no irrigation here," she says.

The water she uses for drinking, cooking and washing arrives every few weeks by lorry. Like many residents of Brazil's dry north-east, she knows that water can be the scarcest commodity.

The national government's solution is to divert part of the Sao Francisco - the only major river that starts and finishes in Brazil - through the sertao, the semi-arid backlands.

Two large canals, one of 400km and another of 220km, will deliver water to cities and to agriculture.

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