Freshwater and Federal Public Policies in Brazil, 2016-2023: dismantling and reconstructing

Abstract

Water governance has been a subject of growing interest in the academic agenda since the 2000s: yet the Brazilian water governance system is still little analyzed. Water crises have multiplied in Brazil in the last two decades, magnified by climate change processes and governance shortcomings, calling for the attention of researchers and policymakers. This paper contributes to the existing literature on water governance by presenting a framework for analyzing water governance in Brazil, investigating recent changes in three Brazilian policies related to water governance, and exploring contributions from the international literature on policy dismantling as applicable to the Brazilian case. The approach adopted is qualitative and exploratory. From six relevant policy areas for water governance analysis - energy, environment (including climate change), water resource management, health, sanitation, and water security - we selected the policies on basic sanitation, water resource management, and conservation for focus. The results show that processes of policy dismantling occurred in the three policy areas analyzed during the period 2016-2022, associated with the backslide of democracy, and point out some challenges and reccomendations for their reconstruction.