Água em situação de escassez: água de chuva para quem?

Abstract

In 1918 it was established in Brazil the Pro - Sanitation League. The interests of the League were the development of sanitation systems in the interior of the country and the expansion of public intervention in rural areas. However, 93 years later the country is still without a national policy for rural sanitation. The actions of different governments have beencharacterized bye sporadic and occasional interventions. It is in the context of this political and institutional vacuum characterized by the lack of alternatives that the creation of the Formation and Social Mobilization Program for Co-existing with Semiarid Conditions: One Million Rural Cisterns (P1MC) becomes relevant. The P1MC was designed in 2001 by the network of Brazilian organizations known as the Articulation of the Semiarid Regions (ASA). In 2003, the program gained a new impulse when it became institutionalized by the Miniary of Social Development and to Fight Hunger. In this year the federal government began tofinance the construction of cisterns for rainwater collection, a main component of the programme. By November 2012, some 398.431 cisterns had been built. Although the construction of the physical structures is at the centre of ASAs work, its goas are broadersince they also involve the mobilization, participation and training of the beneficiaries to enable them tolive in harmony with the semiarid environment. In order to assess the political and institutional dimensions of the programme, as well as the effectiveness of the interventions carried out in the implementation of P1MC, we designed a conceptualframework arid methodology grounded on contributions from the schools of Constructivism and fComplex Systems. Thus, I applied a systemic approach to investigate the P1MC in order to address processes that take place at different scales and involve a diversity of actors, all of which influence the main object under study. The P1MC System consists of five subsystems represented by civil society, the government, the beneficiary population, technology, and public health, as well as the interactions between these subsystems The research involved field work carried out between February 2009 and November 2012, which included a surveywith 623 interviews in 68 municipalities that are beneficiaries of the program. In addition, I conducted in-depth interviews with 32 managers and technicians involved in the processes and with members of the target population. I also used ethnographic techniques includingparticipant observation and the resulting information was recorded through field notebooks and photographs. In addition I complemented the empirical evidence with the analysis of relevant documents. The interpretation of the results was conducted applying the systemicapproach. In this regard it was noted that civil society is the subsystem that has the greatest importance for the implementation of the Program since the government subsystem remains in disarray in relation to the implementation of sanitation interventions in rural areas. Fromthe standpoint of the beneficiary population, it still remains in highly precarious social and economic conditions which is a a major obstacle for achieving effectiveness. In relation to the phenomena arising from the interaction of subsystems, it was observed that the most important involves the intersection between the civil society and population subsystems, in particular concerning the construction of cisterns. In this perspective, the most conspicuous feature of the P1MC is related to the physical dimension, that is the construction of the cisterns. Unfortunately, the objectives o mobilizing and developing the capacity of thepopulation to live in harmony with the semiarid environment have not been fully achieved. Regarding the process of policy evaluation the Programme has achieved its objectives. However, the challenges are still great, especially of a political nature.