In Brazil, a reform of the country’s water management system is underway. This process did not result from either a mass movement or from lobbying by powerful interest groups. Instead, it emerged from the ideas and efforts of a handful of dedicated individuals and groups—technical personnel in state agencies, environmental NGOs, and scientists and engineers. Few grassroots community organizations and political party activists were involved. Nonetheless, it is a reform process that, if brought to fruition, could yield huge social benefit. The rationalization of water management to better ensure water quality and consistent access is one potential advantage of the proposed new approach. Of at least equal value, however, and indeed underpinning this first anticipated gain, is the potential of the new model to democratize decision-making around the administration of this vital natural resource.1
The democratic potential of the nascent reform has captured the imagination of many committed individuals. Some elements of the new management model, however, face powerful political opposition. This has led to an impasse at present and may ultimately derail the new model and its participatory component, unless sufficient political support can be mobilized to defend it.
Brazil’s freshwater resources dwarf those of any other country.2 While the importance of its rivers has stimulated the growth of first-rate university programs in engineering and related scientific fields, these primarily focus on generating hydroelectric power to promote industrial growth. Brazil’s capacity to manage its waterways for other priorities—to best ensure multiple uses and environmental protection, for example—has proven deficient.
Historically, a number of factors have contributed to this shortfall. Most importantly, the general abundance of water in the country allowed each relevant agency and policy sector to pursue its own goals independently. Brazil’s federalist political framework complicates matters, as freshwater management was (and remains) divided between federal and state governments. Measures concerning water quality and quantity—concession of use rights for irrigation, hydroelectricity, public water supply and leisure—thus came to involve dozens of agencies among which there was little coordination.
During the 1990s, to redress this administrative disarray, several Brazilian states and the federal government all passed legislation mandating a reorganization of the country’s water management system. The resulting new framework bears great promise, particularly in its creation of relatively inclusive decision-making committees to oversee management of water resources at the river basin level.
Fundamental to the revised system is the designation of water as an economic good, for whose use or harm its users should pay. For the authors of the new laws, unless the value of water is incorporated within the price of goods and services it will be impossible to control waste and pollution, let alone conserve water for future generations. This logic echoes one of the four “Dublin Principles” agreed to at the 1992 International Conference on Water and the Environment in Dublin, Ireland, which are widely accepted as part of a new set of international norms on freshwater use.3 Agenda 21, the action plan from the follow-up conference which took place in Rio that same year, incorporates these principles and refers to water as “an integral part of the ecosystem, a natural resource and a social and economic good, whose quantity and quality determine the nature of its utilization,” adding that “water users should be charged appropriately.”
The form this new payment-for-use principle has taken in Brazil is known as cobrança (water charging). It requires major water users—industries, sanitation companies, electric companies and irrigators—to pay for both the quantity of water they use and their polluting discharges. Although almost all states included cobrança in water legislation, in most cases it requires additional legislation and institutional change to be viable. The legislative problems are small compared to the institutional and political ones, as water agencies in most states simply do not have the necessary information or monitoring capacities, and governments have been slow to address these shortcomings. As a result, cobrança is only in effect in one basin as a pilot case: the Paraíba do Sul basin.
Assigning water an economic value, however, has proven controversial. Some, including the Catholic Church and many on the left, believed that designating water as an economic good would undermine efforts to establish access to it as a basic human right. Indeed, to these critics such a move was the first step along the slippery slope to full commodification and privatization. So far, however, Brazil has resisted pressures to establish a market for water rights. In this sense, the World Bank failed in its effort to convince Brazilians to adopt a Chilean-style water rights trading system. Ownership of freshwater officially remains public. Cobrança is defined as a market-oriented pricing mechanism that functions to regulate supply and demand and to finance improvements. The allocation of water use and the transfer of water ownership into private hands are expressly beyond the authority of the cobrança system. Water rights are still allocated by the state, though this is now to be done according to priorities established by the participatory basin committees that were also created as part of the restructured system. The new system, therefore, regulates water as a publicly-owned good by employing a delicate balance of both market and participatory planning mechanisms.
Others objected on strictly economic grounds. Large corporations disliked the notion of having to make water use decisions on the basis of cost rather than on loosely defined needs, as in the past. Irrigators argued that internalizing the cost of water would price their products out of the market. Water delivery and sanitation companies resented the possibility of suddenly having to absorb the cost of the waste from their leaky pipes. Household and other small-scale consumers were also upset, for while they were not to be charged directly, most were convinced that utility firms would pass the increased costs along in their bills.
To endow cobrança with greater legitimacy in the face of such concerns, promoters of the new legislation proposed that the fees paid within the jurisdiction of each river basin be returned to that basin to fund improvement projects. Thus, the charges could be construed as an investment rather than as a tax. Moreover, this channeling of fee revenues would give significant power to basin committees with regard to determining priority areas for investment. This fiscal control would add muscle to the democratic influence that these bodies were intended to have.
Like cobrança, the basin committees are an integral component of the reform legislation, which calls for institutions organized along geographical—river basin—rather than political boundaries. The river basin committees were intended to be broadly representative, incorporating the most important stakeholders—state, corporate and civil society. They were to set guidelines and priorities, to deliberate on the pricing criteria for water charges, and to approve or set up the executive agencies that would collect the fees and implement proposed improvements. State and federal agencies and councils were to support, regulate and coordinate basin-level decision-making. Many of the participating water specialists and activists consider the system’s reorganization to be more than a means to rationalize water management; they also see it as a path to the system’s democratization.
The democratizing potential of decentralized water management has been considered more seriously in Brazil than in many other developing countries. After decades of struggling against a centralized authoritarian state, grassroots movements in Brazil sought a greater voice through the creation of decentralized, participatory structures. Indeed, many Brazilian champions of participatory democracy believed decentralized structures would necessarily be more democratic and open than those that had come before. Furthermore, the reform was not seen as an imposition from abroad. National technical specialists formulated its design and fought for its implementation. Crucial elements of this new Brazilian policy had been conceived well before economists of the Washington Consensus linked decentralization and privatization in the minds of state reformers. Although proposals to privatize key services—from hydroelectric facilities to sanitation companies—entered the Brazilian debate, the question of privatization was not equated with that of promoting decentralized and participatory decision-making when it came to water management reform.
In practice, water basin committees generally have come to include representatives of large and small water users, both public and private; municipal, state and federal governments; and organizations concerned with diverse societal interests, such as environmental groups, community organizations, bar associations and the like. The structure and composition of basin committees vary, however, from state to state and even from committee to committee. Local political, social and hydrographic conditions affect the organization of these new bodies.
In Rio Grande do Sul, where the first of the still-functioning basin committees was established in the late 1980s, close relationships among technical employees in state agencies, environmentalists and local universities provided the basis for collaboration. The smaller scale of the basins in that state, the relatively close-knit network of local specialists and the strong community traditions of the region helped facilitate this collaboration.4
Committee organization in São Paulo was a much more complex undertaking. The Piracicaba and Alto Tietê basins were identified in the 1991 water law as requiring the oversight of committees. The Piracicaba River was rank with the waste of sugar and paper mills, affecting the whole region and providing a powerful incentive to organize. Popular mobilization began in 1966 and continued thereafter, eventually prompting the creation of an inter-municipal consortium to facilitate negotiated solutions among municipal and state authorities and business interests. This history of prior mobilization and interaction meant that committee organizers could draw upon existing networks of support and a relatively informed population.5
The Alto Tietê basin is essentially coterminous with Metropolitan São Paulo, and its problems are equally gargantuan in scale.6 Specialists describe the Tietê’s waters as a necklace of pollution surrounding the city. Although there had been periodic mobilizations around the pollution of the city’s reservoirs, there was no recognition in Paulista society of larger common objectives around water management. Instead, there were major conflicts among industry interests, administrators of power plants, inhabitants of squatter settlements, fishers, leisure users and the general urban population.7 Local agencies responsible for energy, sanitation and environmental affairs all boasted long, proud and distinct traditions, with performance records that set the standards for Brazil. Breaking out of the corporative spirit of these agencies, which were defensive of their own prerogatives, was no easy matter, despite the obvious need for a concerted approach.8
In other regions, the problem was not water quality but quantity—too much or too little. Periodic flooding of the Itajaí basin in the southeastern state of Santa Catarina united a wide swath of the population behind a call for action. When the state government dallied, local organizers took the initiative and mobilized business owners, local NGOs and members of the regional university. Because the region is defined by its strong social networks, civic awareness and, by Brazilian standards, a relatively egalitarian society, local conditions facilitated their efforts.9
In Ceará, in Brazil’s northeast, local social capital is much thinner, but the impact of recurring drought has been so devastating that no one questions the need to improve water management. Ceará’s current management system was constructed simultaneously at several levels. First, a semi-autonomous water agency was established and authorized to hire people with both technical and organizational skills. It appointed organizers who were knowledgeable and, in some cases, passionately committed to grassroots participation in development activities.
These organizers quickly perceived that most local users depended upon water from small dams and holding tanks that had been constructed on private land. The dams’ floodgates were opened at the discretion of the landowner, in an often-unpredictable fashion. The organizers created users’ associations around these dams, setting their agencies’ technical experts to work producing scenarios as to how different sets of decisions about water release would play out. They called meetings of those who depended upon this water and presented their scenarios as a prelude to negotiation. As a result, participants decided together when the gates would be opened and for how long, so as to maximize the benefit to their crops. The benefits of collaboration became apparent to all concerned, and these users’ groups now suggest themselves as important players for inclusion in any future committees concerned with water management at a sub-basin or basin level.10
All these organizational developments have set the stage for realizing the proposed new practices of integrated water management. Those committees that have formed, or that are in formation, will be able to determine procedures for charging user fees and to decide how revenues would be spent. The snail’s pace at which implementation of water charges has occurred, however, has weakened the reform’s impetus, although committees continue to be created. The reasons for the current impasse are, in essence, political.
Indeed, political factors have affected the way the new model has been implemented at least as much as social and hydrological conditions have done. Most water reformers did not make the political arguments for the new system with as much vigor as they did the technical ones. Brazilian water specialists generally equate politics with demands made of them to compromise technical coherence to satisfy powerful, sometimes partisan interests. They thought it necessary and possible that technical decisions be insulated from politics, and they believed that the weight of their ideas alone would convince others to support the changes they proposed. Therefore, they did not immediately seek political allies outside a community of like-minded professionals.
Even so, powerful international actors have provided important political support to reform efforts. Using the Ceará project as a model, the World Bank launched the Pró-Água Semi-Árido Program in other northeastern states. At a regional meeting of state officials involved in the program, one official declared that they were moving toward a decentralized and participatory model “because the World Bank told us to do it.” The Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program have similarly played an important role at times. International documents such as Agenda 21—the action plan adopted at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro—have also politically bolstered the reformers by helping to validate their claims.
Part of the broader political problem confronting the reformers is the fact that water reform does not have a natural constituency. It has the dedicated support of much of the expert community, but even that community is divided. Important segments of the environmental movement support it as well, perceiving it to offer an opportunity for a greater voice in policymaking. There is also a larger, but very diffuse, potential constituency in the public at large, for should the new system function as hoped, everyone would gain. But this constituency is hard to mobilize. Meanwhile, many of the most powerful economic actors were well served by the former system in which water was free and regulatory oversight was disorganized and sporadic. Hence, their opposition to reform presents a daunting obstacle.
Since the most politically contentious portion of the new regime—the cobrança—required further enabling legislation, passage of the initial laws did not confront significant opposition and hence did not require broader societal mobilization. This only postponed the inevitable political confrontation. The relatively easy and quiet passage of the initial laws also meant that the reasons for the changes were never effectively communicated to the population at large; most Brazilians are still unaware of the new system.
Predictably, then, when enabling legislation has met with strong political opposition, adequate supporting coalitions have not been in place. In São Paulo, water professionals were blindsided by the stonewalling tactics of industrial associations. At the national level, they were not well prepared to counter the arguments of some members of Congress who called for the introduction of a redistributive component into cobrança, an amendment that would have violated the principle that proceeds should return to the river basin. Moreover, federal legislation failed to establish a separate trust fund for water revenues. Instead, these were assimilated into general state revenues, rendering them subject to the spending restrictions dictated by the terms of Brazil’s agreements with the International Monetary Fund, to say nothing of their tendency to disappear into other projects.
In early May 2004, the Senate passed legislation mandating that cobrança monies be returned to the basins where they were collected, and that they be exempted from the stringent spending restrictions applied to general state revenues. Nonetheless, the mechanisms by which this will be accomplished remain unspecified.
In the meantime, many committees have stagnated due to the very long delay in implementing what was to be their resource base. Some leaders have found creative forms of action to energize their committees and to build a base of community support. The dynamism of these committees stems from the salience of problems caused by poor water management, as in the cases of Ceará and Itajaí, and from their deliberate, relationship-building organizational practices.
Salience is particularly important where the problem involves quantity and its control involves divisible, quantifiable solutions. Relationship building among members, on the other hand, appears to be most effective when efforts focus initially on small projects with modest objectives. The collaborative relationships and practices that are built generate reciprocity and trust—social capital—and create a snowball effect through which committees gain the capacity to mobilize members to carry out more ambitious actions.
A simple example comes from the Litoral Norte water management district in São Paulo. In 2002, leaders organized expeditions of committee members along the area’s waterways, with the immediate objective of identifying problems. Participants noted that these trips helped them develop a sense of joint purpose and grow better acquainted with one another. The activity thus resulted in a number of small-scale remedies for concrete problems, while generating a stronger collaborative culture within the group.
By using available resources creatively, some committees have been able to formulate their own agendas, accomplish goals and attract collaborators. By the end of 2002 in São Paulo, for example, it seemed unlikely that state legislation on cobrança would survive opposition from the industrial sector. As an alternative strategy, Litoral Norte committee leaders convinced the mayors of the four municipalities involved to make annual contributions, proportional to municipal revenues, to fund the committee’s work. They were further able to garner support from councilors of diverse political orientation in order to get decisions ratified by municipal councils. Having achieved passage of the plan, the committee proceeded to establish an executive agency and move forward with implementation of its projects.
The new brazilian water management system is still in formation. The precise shape its structures assume are reflective of local conditions. When and if cobrança is finally implemented, whether on a state-by-state or, for river basins under federal auspices, a case-by-case basis, the system’s dynamics will change. The ideal of a democratic planning process involving multiple stakeholders will collide with the vested interests of certain powerful sectors capable of derailing the system. This occurred in the Paraíba do Sul basin, the pilot case for implementing the cobrança. There, the most powerful economic players—power companies and industries—largely remained on the sidelines in the early stages, participating formally but without committing to particular actions. Not surprisingly, however, once money and profits were at stake, they asserted themselves forcefully in relation to decisions about who and how much would be charged, and how the proceeds would be spent.
Committees whose early practices give them some legitimacy and presence in the local community will likely navigate the perils of this anticipated confrontation better than others. In cases such as that of the Itajaí committee, local industrialists are already committed to finding joint solutions to problems. In other cases, reform success may depend upon the degree to which collaborative practices have been built among stakeholders. Potential veto players will be more likely to accede to change if they perceive in their counterparts a willingness to accommodate some of their needs.
The outcome of this expected political collision will determine the fate of the participatory decision-making model for Brazil’s water management system. The defection of powerful actors would almost certainly displace decision-making elsewhere, gutting the model’s democratizing potential. The successful defense of the reform effort, on the other hand, could well inaugurate an auspicious new era. Reformers hope it will be an era in which the management of this vital resource better takes into account the needs and concerns of all sectors of Brazilian society. Time, together with the continued dedication of various determined individuals and organizations, will tell.
About the Authors:
Margaret E. Keck is professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, author of The Workers’ Party and Democratization in Brazil and coauthor of Activists Beyond Borders. Rebecca Abers is associate researcher with the Public Policy Research Center at the University of Brasília and author of Inventing Local Democracy: Grassroots Politics in Brazil. They are coordinators of the Watermark Project.
NOTES
1. Most of the information contained in this article was collected by participants in the Watermark Project (Projeto Marca d’Água), a multidisciplinary study of the development of decentralized water management institutions in 20 Brazilian river basins over five to ten years. For more information on the project, see: http://www.marcadagua.org.br.
2. At 4,309 cubic miles per year, they far outstrip those of second-place Russia, with 2,789 cubic miles. See Peter H. Gleik, The World’s Water 2000-2001 (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000), p. 197.
3. The conference, a preparatory event for the June 1992 UNCED, included government-designated experts from over 100 countries and representatives of 80 international, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations. “The Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development,” http://www.wmo.ch/web/homs/documents/english/icwedece.html.
4. Janine Haase, “Bacia do Rio dos Sinos,” and Ricardo Gutierrez, “Bacia do Rio Gravataí,” http:// www.marcadagua.org.br.
5. Paula Duarte Lopes, “Bacia do Rio Piracicaba,” in Rosa Maria Formiga Johnsson and Paula Duarte Lopes, Projeto Marca d’Água: seguindo as mudanças na gestão das bacias hidrográficas do Brasil: caderno 1: retratos 3X4 das bacias pesquisadas (Brasília: FINATEC, 2003).
6. The São Paulo water districts are not all river basins. The Tietê, for example, is divided into districts for management of the upper, middle and lower reaches of the river, each part of which has distinct characteristics.
7. Interview, Ana Lúcia Magyar, FUNDAP, São Paulo, May 25, 1999. See also Margaret E. Keck, “‘Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink:’ Land Use and Water Policy in São Paulo, Brazil,” in Peter Evans (ed.), Livable Cities? Urban Struggles for Livelihood and Sustainability (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 162-194.
8. Margaret Keck and Pedro Jacobi, “Bacia do Alto Tietê,” http://www.marcadagua.org.br.
9. See Ivanir Mais, Bacia do Rio Itajaí,” http://www.marcadagua.org.br; Beate Frank and Noema Bohn, “A Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio Itajaí e o processo de criação do Comitê de Bacia,” in Theis, Tomio and Mattedi (eds.), Novos Olhares sobre Blumenau (Blumenau: EdiFURB, 2000).
10.Rosana Garjullil, et al., “Bacia do Rio Jaguaribe,” http://www.marcadagua.org.br. Studies of other examples can also be obtained at this same Web site and in Rosa Maria Formiga Johnsson and Paula Duarte Lopes, Projeto Marca d’Água: seguindo as mudanças na gestão das bacias hidrográficas do Brasil: caderno 1: retratos 3X4 das bacias pesquisadas.
