It cost £2.1bn to divert a river in Brazil’s outback. So where has all the water gone?

Despite official claims that the São Francisco River project supplies 12m people, many of those who had to make way for its construction in 2007 still have no water at all A concrete canal cutting through the Caatinga scrubland feeds a surface reservoir two and a half miles from Maria de Fátima Ferreira da Silva’s home in rural Brazil. The canal passes Sertânia and continues until it reaches Monteiro, the next town along, where it spills its precious cargo into the bed of the Paraíba River –...

By Constance Malleret in Sertânia and Monteiro, Brazil. Photographs by Leonardo Carrato for the Guardian