Desafios e perspectivas da implementação dos direitos humanos pela regulação do saneamento no Brasil : a situação crítica da pandemia da Covid-19 como teste

Abstract

The year 2020 marked ten years since the explicit recognition of the human rights to water and sanitation (HRtWS) by the United Nations General Assembly. Signatory states have an obligation to progressively realize these rights using maximum available resources (UN, 2013). Regulators, as public officials, have the same obligations, including ensuring compliance with these rights by municipalities and other entities they regulate (UNGA, 2017). Based on the Covid-19 pandemic, this paper aims to explore the role of regulators of the sanitation sector in Brazil in the implementation of HRtWS. Thus, in this paper, the new coronavirus pandemic will be considered as a guide for the actions of regulators in the sanitation sector. To this end, this work is divided into three stages: i) analysis of institutional responses to the pandemic in Brazilian states; ii) analysis of responses to the pandemic by regulators; iii) observation of the actions and routines of each entity from the perspective of the HRtWS. In the first stage, the first responses to the pandemic by governmental entities of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches were analyzed. In the second stage, the responses of all Brazilian state regulatory entities during the first 40 epidemiological weeks were analyzed. From the analysis of the content of these responses from the point of view of the HRtWS, a classification was created according to the relevance of the content to the principles of these human rights. The third stage of the project aimed to discuss the scenario during the pandemic, based on semi-structured interviews. The objective was to discuss the possible paths and scenarios for the construction of a positive regulatory environment for the implementation of the HRtWS in Brazil. The results of this work point to a prioritization in the institutional responses in two aspects: i) the protection of the population; ii) financial and economic sustainability of service providers. With respect to the protection of the population, the results point to a bias in the assistance provided to the population, not contemplating it in its entirety, in addition to the absence of the principles of equity and non-discrimination. The results also point out that the institutions focused on sanitation were more committed to the financial and economic sustainability of the service providers than to the protection of the population. The analysis of the regulatory agencies' answers also points to an inequity of attention, for instance, communities located in areas without sanitation services were not mentioned, nor were individuals in vulnerable situations. Additionally, in the regulatory responses, the principles of equity and non-discrimination were more correlated to economic compensation measures. The results also point to an absence of specific responses for sanitary sewerage. The role of the regulatory entity in the implementation of the HRtWS in Brazil was marked by limits imposed by the legal and institutional framework of the sector, requiring greater participation of the entities and the population in the development of public policies.