Análise político-institucional da gestão das águas na bacia Lagos São João, RJ.

Abstract

Some questions have currently challenging the water resources institutional politics in the implementation of the Brazilian water resources legislation. The first one is to implement the decentralized river basin management at the lowest appropriate level. The second one is to make that basin level committees develop themselves in a participating way that includes to share the decisions between all the local actors, mostly, the residents (inhabitants) who were the most affected by water problems and who were, up to recently, gotten rid of the decisions. A third question is to ensure that the water resources management is integrated to the environment management. The Rio de Janeiro State has, as all other Brazilian States, its own water resources legislation and has implemented it since 1999. The state Environmental Macro-Region 4, which embraces the region known as Lagos and the São João river basin, both localized in the East extremity of Rio s coast, since 1999, are developing its environmental management and, specially, the water resources management by the creation of the Lagos São João Intermunicipal Consortium and, in 2005, its river basin Committee. These river basin arrangements were operating jointly and have been succeeded to promote de organization of all local actors, specially, the fisherman, and the inhabitants, beyond the municipalities and the water concessionaires. Many results of the committee actions were already benefiting the region environment and his inhabitants, specially, by leading the solution of the sanitation problems in the region, in special, the Araruama and Saquarema lagoons and the interruption of the sand and shell extraction of the lagoons and rivers, what are proportioning fishery recovering in the region. The political and institutional analysis of the river basin management arrangements in the region, that includes their creation and the development, their successes and failures and their institutional sustainability, are the objectives of this dissertation. In this purpose, it was used the World Bank methodology of the Integrated River Basin Management and the Principle of Managing Water Resources at the Lowest Appropriate Level: When and Why Does It (Not) Work in Practice? project (Kemper et al., 2005), with some adaptations.