Freshwater and Federal Public Policies in Brazil1 , 2016-2023: dismantling and reconstructing

Résumé

Water governance has been a subject of growing interest in the

academic agenda since the 2000s: yet the Brazilian water gover-

nance system is still little analyzed. Water crises have multiplied

in Brazil in the last two decades, magnified by climate change

processes and governance shortcomings, calling for the atten-

tion of researchers and policymakers. This paper contributes

to the existing literature on water governance by presenting a

framework for analyzing water governance in Brazil, investigating

recent changes in three Brazilian policies related to water gover-

nance, and exploring contributions from the international liter-

ature on policy dismantling as applicable to the Brazilian case.

The approach adopted is qualitative and exploratory. From six

relevant policy areas for water governance analysis - energy, envi-

ronment (including climate change), water resource management,

health, sanitation, and water security - we selected the policies on

basic sanitation, water resource management, and environmental

conservation for focus. The results show that processes of policy

dismantling occurred in the three policy areas analyzed during the

period 2016-2022, associated with the backslide of democracy,

and point out some challenges and reccomendations for their

reconstruction.