As implicações geográficas da água como recurso: um olhar sobre o comitê de bacia hidrográfica do Rio Ivinhema – MS

Abstract

The social construction of water involves a chain of elements, including the economic valuation as a water resource and the political order that highlights its fluidity across social and environmental systems. From these perspectives, the research analyzes the creation of an integrated management model through the Ivinhema river basin committee. The analytical component adopted starts from the documentary exploration of minutes and other documents produced by the committee between the years 2010-22, contact with State bodies, analysis of legislation and field observations, with the aim of understanding the multiple geographies of the political action and planning induced by the committee in the socio-spatial organization within the basin. The content analysis was preceded by the hypothesis that the implementation of the basin committee does not decentralize the forms of power and water governance given the constitution of integrated management. In this construction, the work systematized a set of graphic information, maps, figures, tables that correlate the components and configuration of land and water use with the action of mediation by water resources policy, involving the dynamics of water relations. committee power and identifying links, encounters and disagreements within the river basin sphere in a multi-scale manner as sectoral representative entities have different scales of dialogue. A segmentation of representation by entities on the committee was identified on an equal basis, but with a predominance of seats occupied by the agribusiness sector, in addition to a depletion of participation from other sectors of society, decoupling of responsibilities in conflictual situations and direction of agendas. The dynamics of the committee's functioning permeates the productive relations of the basin, mainly the economic matrix of agribusiness in the production of commodities and configuring an antagonistic space of participatory governance, because the research demonstrates elements of socio-spatial segregation of local communities even though there is a legal provision for their representation in the committee. Regarding integrated and decentralized management, the study found that it occurs in a subordinate manner to agro-hydrobusiness, disconnected from management on a municipal scale, disconnected and without advances to the instruments of the basin plan, indicating a condition of pro-forma implementation of Brazilian policy of water resources via river basin committees. The design of public policy and its institutionality in this management instance and in this basin committee has functioned as a model of tripartite water regulation, with the State having demonstrated its capacity to mediate relations of access to assets under common ownership, establishing procedures that guarantee mechanisms of appropriation and economic exploitation of water to the detriment of others.