Institutional Change in Brazilian Water Policy: How are Management Spaces Built?

Abstract

This article offers a theoretical, conceptual and methodological discussion of the
spatiality of the institutional innovations accompanying new Brazilian water policies. First, the effectiveness of new policies dating from 1997 and the traditional geographic approach through hydrographic basis are questioned. Starting from the basic assumption that the discipline has instruments with which to understand water policy that have not been used fully yet, the article shows how water management could be undertaken and why new Brazilian policy has been (un)successful. Three separate problems are identified with management, water and water management. Is sues such as decentralization, social participation and the elaboration of hydro-social cycles are considered in order to build a coherent narrative with which to understand water as an object of political tensions. The conclusions reached point to the need for conceiving
management spaces as new territories resulting from the superposition of different regulatory surfaces projected over water