Rights and accessibility of water applicable to territory governance in Brazil

Abstract

Although Brazil has almost 15% of the world’s freshwater volume, its insufficiency is due to severe climate change in recent years, and has provoked a debate on water resources, which in turn need to be managed in a country defined as ‘rich in water’. As an effective force for sustainability, local, regional, national and global monitoring and management is essential to make the best use of available water today and in the future. This debate focuses in particular on the accessibility of water as a system of sustainable governance over time, welcoming the equal distribution of water and the right to water for the different regions of the country. The governance of water resources in Brazil is under the responsibility of the federated entities, by which they represent unequal societies and river basins. Considering that the elements that cause inequalities are territorial, it needs coordination that seeks solutions to water, now too much, now in scarcity, and now polluted. In the demographic perspective, they reflect the characteristics intrinsic to the local dynamics, diversities in access, which includes basic sanitation and the concentration of the deficit in certain population groups, whose priority is to make management decisions at administrative levels that are reciprocally compatible and effective. Therefore, it should be noted that governance for water allocation in an equitable manner is closely linked to a decentralized regime without the strengthening of competence at the subnational level. In its multiple approaches, it instrumentalizes the inefficiency of physical, economic accessibility, quantity and water quality for the Brazilian society in its majority. This condition results from exogenous, socioeconomic, demographic and cultural aspects, stemming from the continuous presence of water market treatment, lack of strategic planning and management, and the many existing challenges to ensure adequate access.