Gestão comunitária para abastecimento de água em áreas rurais: uma análise comparativa de experiências no Brasil e na Nicarágua

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 1980s, when the organization of the United Nations - UN declared International Decade of Water Supply and Sanitation (1981-1990), Member States and the international agencies have made multiple efforts to expand the services of water supply and sanitation. Even with these efforts, there are still about 130.6 million residents of urban areas and 637.4 million rural dwellers without access to safe drinking water (WHO e UNICEF, 2013).This demonstrates that there is much to be done in this field, especially in rural areas, where the implementation of policies implies greater degree of complexity and the sustainability of the projects, still represents a challenge for policymakers. In this context, there is the idea that models of community management could help achieve the universalization of these services, and the solutions is commonly used in rural areas of developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Nevertheless, in countries such as Brazil and Nicaragua, there are that innovations in the application of these models. Looking for inclusion of their needs on the public agenda, coincident in time with the interest of the States to delegate some of their functions, civil society became an active participant in the formulation and management of public policies, generating the need to implement programs or legislative frameworks covering their cooperation. Considering that this participation of civil society has caused changes still little understood, both in Brazil and in Nicaragua, the present study aims to analyze these experiences through the study of cases in both countries. To meet the goals set by this research, were used qualitative methods, performing an intersection of information between documentary research, bibliographic research and interviews. This study used official documents of different actors in the sanitation sector that act in the rural areas in the respective countries, including agreements, laws, regulations and reports, as well as studies by other researchers. Interviews were conducted in-depth semi-structured with the key stakeholders in government , civil society organizations and the users of the water supply systems. For the case of Brazil, there were a total of 47 interviews with people involved in the execution of P1MC, in the period between February 2009 and November 2010. In Nicaragua were performed a total of 23 interviews between December 2011 and February 2012. As a conclusion, it can be affirmed that in both cases, the relations state society are changing, and civil society becoming an active proponent and participant in the implementation of public policies. The evolution of these relations shows not only the maturing of society, as well as trends and priorities of governments can make a major difference, showing that the water supply mainly depends on the political will of the rulers. According this investigation it was also showed that the participation of civil society in the formulation and implementation of public policies, aimed at improving access to water, had a positive result for both Nicaragua and for Brazil, verifying that the collaboration between State and civil society can generate greater effectiveness of public policies in this sector. However, for water supply systems, individual or collective, generate the expected impact on quality of life of the target population and achieve sustainability in time, those responsible for managing them require advice and technical training so often by the government.