Governança pública em gestão de desastres socioambientais : uma análise de programas de reparação na tragédia do Rio Doce

Abstract

The collapse of the Fundão tailings dam in Mariana, Minas Gerais, on November 5, 2015 left environmental, cultural, social, and economic damage as consequences. To repair this damage, a complex public-private institutional arrangement was constructed, with a multi-jurisdictional and multi-sectoral nature, through terms of transaction and adjustment of conduct between various public and societal actors and the shareholders of Samarco-S/A. The Renova Foundation (FR) played a central role in this arrangement, with the objective of proposing, preparing, and executing repair programs, but under the validation of an Interfederative Committee (CIF) composed of the affected states and the Federal Government, among other interested parties. Due to numerous problems presented in the preparation and implementation of the programs formulated to repair the damage, their slowness, and recurring non-compliance with agreements, objectives, and programmatic actions, we sought support in governance theories to explore factors influencing this poor performance. To this end, we selected two important programs, one of an environmental nature and the other socioeconomic. We selected the dimensions of participation, coordination and control as essential to explain performance, and guided our exploration through interviews with participants in the selected programs and extensive documentary analysis, using the process tracking methodology. In the end, based on the analysis of the two cases, we came to the understanding that the failures in the elaboration and implementation of the programs are related to the structure and operation of the governance arrangement, especially the following: 1) the complexity of the rules, high intersectorality and large number of instances and programs made coordination and control difficult; 2) the agreement allowed the population of the governance and management instances of the FR by people linked to Samarco and its shareholders through which the FR focused on reducing costs and demands for reparations and on controlling information; 3) it favored the FR before governments and the judiciary in the application of decisions, corrections and imposition of penalties; 4) it allowed the FR to repeatedly disregard the recommendations and decisions of other actors on important programmatic criteria; 5) generated asymmetries of participation that reflected inequalities in the conditions of the actors in the structure. On the other hand, the arrangement constructed made the conflict and the vulnerable position of certain communities more visible and, therefore, possible for intervention.