Planejamento em saneamento: panorama, perspectiva técnico-científica e avaliação de políticas públicas no contexto da elaboração dos Planos Municipais de Saneamento Básico no Brasil

Abstract

Planning is an important instrument for public policy on basic sanitation and is fundamental for transforming the reality of sanitation in Brazil. In this context, this study's objective is to analyze local sanitation planning in the country, focusing on the elaboration of Municipal Sanitation Plans (PMSB). The study was carried out in four stages. In the first stage, an overview of the development of PMSBs was constructed and analyzed, based on a database developed in the SanBas Project (https://sanbas.eng.ufmg.br/). The second stage consisted of a systematic review of the literature, based on scientific articles that address local planning in basic sanitation, with no restrictions regarding the date of publication or location of the studies. The subsequent stages involved the public policy to promote the development of PMSBs, promoted by the National Health Foundation (FUNASA), through partnerships with higher education institutions in the country through the signing of Decentralized Execution Terms (TED). This approach was aimed at analyzing the results of the public policy, including qualitative document analysis and semi-structured interviews (stage 3), and their impact on the groups involved in the process, with the application of questionnaires to representatives of the municipalities and teams from the universities participating in the TED (stage 4). In the panorama of the elaboration of the PMSB, the results show that 40.7% of Brazilian municipalities had their PMSB effectively located. The greatest deficits in elaboration were observed in small municipalities and those with low or very low HDI, especially in the North and Northeast macro-regions. In the systematic review, 32 articles were selected. The studies indicate that the challenges for local planning in sanitation include the lack of technical capacity, insufficient financial resources, institutional fragmentation and political will. The importance of support mechanisms for planning adopted in different countries was also highlighted. Subsequently, in the document analysis to assess the policy to promote the development of plans, 13 TED between educational institutions and FUNASA were identified. The results demonstrate broad project performance in different Brazilian macro-regions, mainly in those with low rates of plan development, and their targeting of municipalities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants is also relevant, as indicated in the overview. The main difficulties of the projects are related to delays in implementation, triggered mainly by external or institutional factors. However, this type of support still proved to be more efficient than other types of programs that support the development of PMSB, such as individual or collective agreements. In the perception of municipal managers, in general, the projects implemented by TED were positive, and in most cases, subsequent implementation of the plans is in progress. Furthermore, based on the perspectives of the TED teams, the projects also provided development and training of human resources. The results indicate that there is still a need to advance in the development and subsequent monitoring of PMSB, reinforcing that public policies that promote institutional articulations, as occurs in the decentralization of actions and resources by FUNASA, are promising for structuring basic sanitation policy in Brazil.