Elsevier

World Development

Volume 32, Issue 12, December 2004, Pages 2121-2137
World Development

Can Water Reform Survive Politics? Institutional Change and River Basin Management in Ceará, Northeast Brazil

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2004.08.002Get rights and content

Summary.

This study examines the implementation of participatory river basin management in the Baixo Jaguaribe/Banabuiú valleys in Ceará, NE Brazil. It specifically analyzes the creation of Users Commissions and River Basin Committees, which are deliberative organisms that make decisions about river basin management with the participation of water users, state and societal representatives. It argues that the ability of policymakers to sustain the project’s more innovative aspects—namely stakeholder participation, decentralization and integration—depends, first, on the “character” of the policy networks entrusted with the implementation of different portions of the new regulatory framework; second, on the ability of these networks to garner support of other influential actors inside and outside the state government; and third, on the ability of the network and its supporters to diffuse policy opposition.

Introduction

Throughout the world, the concern over the future of water resources has increasingly engaged governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and communities. More and more, countries seek to implement water management policies that at the same time address economic development and environmental sustainability. In their pursuit of these goals, governments—especially in emergent democracies—have experimented with governance practices that seek not only to respond to fiscal constraints but also to public frustration with centralized state-led policymaking. In order to achieve better natural resource management and improved participatory policymaking, one favored approach has been the creation of decentralized decisionmaking bodies, such as river basin councils, which incorporate public and private stakeholders in their decisionmaking and integrate policymaking across different policy areas.

This new paradigm for water management has been quickly spreading around the world, fueled by a powerful combination of strong support from multilateral organizations such as the World Bank and from water experts and conservation advocates convinced that the sustainability of water resources can only be achieved through decentralized, integrated management. Inspired by this new paradigm, in the early 1990s, a few Brazilian states, including Ceará and São Paulo, initiated policy to reform their water resources management. In 1997, Brazil followed suit by replacing its outdated, inefficient, sectorally-based water management system with a new set of regulatory frameworks. The system included a new Water Resource Law that, in turn, instituted the National Policy for Water Resources and created the National System for the Management of Water Resources. Besides decentralization and integration, the law introduced specific institutional arrangements to incorporate public participation by creating River Basin Committees. It also defined water as an economic good and created a bulk water use permit and charge system designed at the basin level. With the reform, water management decisionmaking moved from the federal, state and municipal levels to the river basin initiating a period of great activity and experimentation whose variation across the country provides a unique opportunity for the study of decentralization and participation of natural resources management.

This study examines the implementation of participatory water management in the Jaguaribe River basin, in the state of Ceará, Brazil. It specifically analyzes the Jaguaribe/Banabuiú Participatory Management Project (Projeto de Gerenciamento Participativo do Jaguaribe/Banabuiú) carried out by Ceará’s Water Resources Management Company (Companhia de Gestão de Recursos Hídricos—COGERH).1 The most innovative aspect of COGERH’s approach has been the organization of Users’ Commissions to debate and decide on the use and management of bulk water in the basin. These unique bodies—within Brazil, first created in Ceará—function as de facto water allocation organizations among different users in the river basin. This model has attracted a considerable amount of attention both in Brazil and abroad and has been hailed as one to be followed by federal water management organizations such as the National Water Agency (Agência Nacional de Água—ANA)2 and the National Department of Public Works against Drought (Departamento Nacional de Obras Contra Secas—DNOCS).3

The institutional stability of the Ceará model has, however, recently been challenged by the introduction of a number of changes both at the institutional and implementation levels. Among such changes are the drafting and submission of a new water resources law to the State Assembly, an attempt to re-structure the organizational composition of water management and the revision of COGERH’s approach to water reform. Indeed, COGERH’s role has increasingly shifted from one of technical support for the River Basin Committees to one of an operational company in charge of establishing and managing Ceará’s bulk water permit and charge system.

While there has been considerable attention paid to the different aspects of the decentralization of natural resources management all around the world (see, for example, Ribot, 2002), most of the focus has been on examining constraints to implementation. Because many studies ground their analysis in the dichotomy between central and local power, they pay less attention to the struggles of different actors at the local level who push for conflicting agendas of natural resources management. In this article, we examine how two policy networks at the local level square off their competing interests in the context of day to day practices which in effect seek to mold institutions so as to achieve their management and political goals.

We contend that the institutional stability of the Ceará participatory model depends on three factors: (a) the character of the policy networks involved in the organization of water management (and how it shapes the actions of the actors entrusted with the implementation of the new regulatory framework); (b) the ability of reform-oriented networks to build broader support within and without the state policymaking machinery to their reformist agenda; and (c) the ability of this coalition of reform-oriented technocrats, organized groups in civil society, and influential supporters to resist and diffuse policy opposition.

In the next sections, we describe the action arena, that is, the set of variables—including the actors, the structural rules, the community attributes, and the material conditions—that shape the reform process (Ostrom, 1998). First, we examine the institutional and physical aspects defining water use in the state and how they affect and are affected by the implementation of the new set of institutions created by Ceará’s Water Resources Law. Next, we briefly describe the analytical framework used to understand the decentralization of water management in Ceará and the role of ideas in shaping the actions of policy networks involved in the implementation of water reform. Finally, we focus the analysis on the sociopolitical processes and actors behind the organization of water users and allocation of water in the state. We conclude with a few remarks about the constraints and possibilities of decentralization of water management in Ceará that can inform similar processes in other river basins in Brazil and other countries.

Section snippets

The physical stage: water scarcity and drought

In Ceará, the implementation of water management reform has been critically shaped by the state’s physical characteristics and low availability of water resources. The majority of the state falls within the semi-arid region of Northeast Brazil known as the sertão (hinterland) where most of the rainfall is concentrated between December and March (Ceará Governo do Estado, 1998, p. 22). This period corresponds roughly to the state’s planting season and is popularly known in the region as “the

Policy networks and democratic decentralization

Although Ceará’s water reform was unquestionably prompted by years of perceived crisis within the state’s water management system, its choice of a model was certainly shaped by a package of widely diffused policy prescriptions for “good governance” whose proponents maintain that decentralization, public participation, and shared governance can improve not only policy outcome—through more efficient water management—but also policy process—through practices such as transparency, accountability,

Decentralization and water reform in Ceará

Among the nine states that comprise the semi-arid region of the Brazilian Northeast, Ceará is not an exception in its high vulnerability to drought. Indeed, the use and management of water resources have always been a high priority in the state’s public and governmental policy agendas. Besides its importance for economic and human uses, water has traditionally played a key cultural and political role in Ceará where power has been commonly equated with the property of land and water. In this

The politics of water management: participation, knowledge and institutionalization

The implementation of water reform started in 1994 when the team of técnicos from COGERH faced their first crisis as a result of the 1991–94 drought. That year the state’s main reservoirs were very low and serious conflicts over water allocation were expected (Alvarez, Oliveira, & Bezerra, 1995). In order to appraise the situation and to get to know the users more closely, DOU técnicos started planning for a framework that both addressed the conflict brewing as a consequence of drought and

Conclusions

This study examines the implementation of the Jaguaribe/Banabuiú Participatory Management Project. The project includes the creation of Users Commissions and River Basin Committees with significant stakeholder participation and transparent decisionmaking processes. It argues that the ability of policymakers to sustain the project’s more innovative aspects—namely stakeholder participation, decentralization and integration—depends on, first, the character of the networks entrusted with the

Acknowledgement

This study is part of the Watermark Project, a broad research initiative that combines scholars and policymakers aiming at carrying out extensive comparative institutional research of water reform in Brazil. Research for this study was financed by the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration—NOAA and the National Science Foundation—NSF. We thank three anonymous reviewers and Rosa Maria Formiga Johnsson, Rebecca Abers, Lori Kumler, Ricardo Gutierrez and Margaret Keck for their valuable

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