A Governança da água no Brasil: qual o papel dos municípios? O que falhas da governança da água na cidade de Itabuna, Bahia, revelam sobre a gestão municipal de recursos hídricos

Abstract

Poor management of urban spaces, associated with climate change, has resulted in a significant increase in the number of municipalities affected by water-related disasters in the last decade throughout Brazil. Water governance emerges in this context, as an analytical and prescriptive approach to develop an integrated water resources management capable of articulating water conservation with urban development and basic sanitation. Several studies suggest that failures in water governance, which occur at multiple levels of administration, are at the origin of much of water-related problems threatening water security. In Brazil, it is up to the municipalities to promote the integration of public policies within the cities, in view of the different areas affecting water resources, such as environmental management, basic sanitation and land use and occupation. However, municipalities do not have dominion over water resources, that is, they do not have direct responsibility for their management. Starting from the hypothesis that water governance is an essential issue for Brazilian municipalities, the thesis was developed based on two different studies: first, an analysis of the Brazilian legal framework, regarding the role of municipalities in the National Water Resources Management System (SINGREH); and, second, an applied research that consisted of identifying water governance failures in a specific municipality, using the analytical approach of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development - OECD (2011:2016). By establishing a relationship between the two studies, it was possible to perceive that the Brazilian legal framework gives rise to the “failure of the municipality” in SINGREH, a legal, institutional and management instrument void, in the area of water resources, within Brazilian municipalities. The second study showed that the main water issues affecting the analyzed municipality were related to administrative and political failures in water governance, in addition to other failures affecting the inadequate application of water resources management instruments. The study continues with the discussion of the failure of the municipality considering the recent reforms that the Federal Government has been implementing in areas affecting water governance, showing that these tend to further weaken the role of municipalities in the management of water resources. Finally, it is argued that water governance is a topic of great relevance for Brazilian municipalities and strategies for its development are presented with the objective of strengthening the performance of municipalities in SINGREH. The main contribution of this study lies in the identification of typical problems of small and medium Brazilian municipalities in the area of water resources management, through the analysis of the institutional environment and the application of water governance as an analytical tool. The indication of possible strategies and indicators to build a municipal management of water resources in the analyzed context gives a practical sense to the work, according to the “governance for practitioner,” a new trend in discussions on the management of water resources.