Abastecimento de água e escassez hidrossocial no município de São Gonçalo, Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

From the perspective of political ecology, the circulation of water in urban spaces consists of a socio-natural product of the reconfiguration of the hydrological cycle, making water flows a combined physical and social process. The concept of hydrosocial scarcity considers that this circulation is directly related to the economic, social and political conditions of different social groups. In the light of this concept, vulnerable individuals and social groups experience a non-hydrological but socially produced exclusion, in which water flows towards capital. From the finding of hydrosocial scarcity in São Gonçalo-RJ, this research analyzes, in depth, how this phenomenon develops and what are its aggravating factors. In the results obtained, it was found that the municipal water service has a double standard: a continuous supply, with sufficient water supply to household demands and satisfactory; and another, with prolonged and systemic bursts, insufficient to the demands and considered unsatisfactory. The hydrosocial scarcity in São Gonçalo forces the poor population, even those linked to the service of drinking water, to seek access to water by wells, cisterns, water tanks and hydraulic pumps. It creates individuals who are insecure of water, because they are not connected to the network (first dimension), and unsafe water users, even connected to the supply system, with a condition similar to the first group (second dimension). The hydrosocial scarcity of individuals and users socioeconomically disempowered in São Gonçalo generates: naturalization and acceptance of scarcity; disputes and internal conflicts over water; break of collective bonds; the belief in the solution of scarcity via markets; misperceptions about domestic water safety; depreciation of water via the general network; and, the high symbolism to wells and cisterns. Its causes are multifactorial and multiscale that permeate the macroscale through the infrastructure configuration imagined for the Imunana-Laranjal Integrated System, created to supply and respond to the urbanization and modernization project of Niterói (former capital of the State of Rio de Janeiro) and the water insecurity of the Guapiaçu-Macacu Basin. In the microscale it is related to the insecurity of municipal treated water, caused by the incompleteness of the potable water reserve subsystem. This incompleteness excludes the populations of the districts of Ipiíba and Monjolos, totaling more than 400,000 inhabitants, which represents the poorest contingent of the municipality. If the hydrosocial relations of the Imunana-Laranjal System and the municipal supply are not reviewed, the populations of these two districts may be further impacted by the insertion of new users in the system, in future occurrences of droughts in guapiaçu-macacu and/or in reductions and/or paralizations in the production and distribution of water in ETA Laranjal.