Water Reform across the State/Society Divide: The Case of Ceará, Brazil

Abstract

This paper focuses on partnerships across the state-society divide in the management of bulk water in the state of Ceará, in Northeast Brazil. It examines the creation of Users' Commissions in two of Ceará's river basins—the Lower Jaguaribe/Banabuiú and the Curú. It is argued that the presence of synergy across the state-society divide is critical to guarantee meaningful public participation. In turn, meaningful participation improves decision making at the river basin level and supports positive values in policy making such as decentralization, equity, accountability and transparency.

Notes

National Council for Public Private Partnerships (2002).

This research is partially funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It is also associated with the Watermark Project Project (Projeto Marca D'agua), a broad research initiative to compare water reform across river basins and across time. For more on the Watermark Project, see www.marcadagua.org.br.

The Users' Commissions were designed as precursors to the more ‘official’ River Basins Committees (RBC) which were included in the new state Water Law. Since the early 2000s several RBCs have been or are in the process of being created in Ceará. However, at least in one case, that of the Lower Jaguaribe/Banabuiú valleys, the creation of a RBC did not invalidate the role of the Users' Commission, which continues to operate side-by-side and in conjunction with the Committee.

The proportion of representation can vary. For example, in the Lower Jaguaribe the breakdown is 60% users and society and 40% for municipal, state and federal sectors; in the Curú river basin, the breakdown was 50% users and society and 50% municipal, state and federal sectors (Garjulli et al., 2002 ).

In 1997, the federal government enacted Law 9.433 also known as ‘Water Law’ (Lei das Águas) that instituted the National Policy for Water Resources and at the same time created the National System for the Management of Water Resources.

The Ceará model was also critically shaped by other outside actors, especially the World Bank. In the early 1990s, as part of the negotiation for a loan to improve the state's water related infrastructure, the Bank imposed as one of the conditions for the loan the creation of a formal water agency to implement water reform. In addition, outside consultants hired to advise on the creation of the water agency suggested that it include social scientists entrusted with the task to design and implement a strong community participatory framework for water management. For more on the creation of COGERH and the role of the World Bank, see Kemper & Olson (2001).

Many of these issues are currently being examined in the sphere of the Watermark Project (Projeto Marca D'agua).

In 1993, after a three-year drought, the city was threatened with extreme water scarcity. The government implemented a water rationing programme and sped up the construction of a water canal transferring water from the Jaguaribe river basin to Fortaleza.

From the late 1950s to early 1990s Ceará invested substantially both in the science as well as in empirical experiments of cloud seeding. At one time, the state had three airplanes dedicated to the task and despite virtually no evidence of success, cloud seeding became an important policy tool because it conveyed the idea of ‘action’ from the government. In this sense, the sound of the airplanes in the sky became more important than the rains they were supposed to be triggering. For more on cloud seeding and the predominance of technical solutions to water scarcity, see Lemos (2003).

In practice, this meant that certain organizations would operate competently almost despite the fact they were part of the government. They would be protected from common clientelistic practices such as nepotism, corruption, party spoils, etc. The most notorious and controversial ‘reserve of competence’ was the apparatus created to design and implement economic policy in Brazil during the military regime. For more on the economic planning institutional apparatus see Dreifuss (1981).

However, the predominance of irrigated agriculture and its organized groups has skewed the dispute for water allocation in their favor to the detriment of other uses such as fisheries and rain-fed agriculture (Alvarez da Silva et al., 1995 ).

A município is a political subdivision, roughly corresponding to a US county.

In at least one documented occasion, some members of the Users' Commission resisted attempts from state officials to curb water use by establishing a programme that at the same time imposed water fees to most users and compensated others for lost yields due to limited availability of water for irrigation. The programme, called Águas do Vale, was designed in response to the drought-induced water crisis of 2001. For more on Águas do Vale see http://www.srh.ce.gov.br/

However, the recent election of a new state government may threaten the stability of the current institutional design of river basin management in Ceará. For more details, see Lemos & de Oliveira (2004).