Permanências e urgências das políticas públicas de acesso à água no Território Sudoeste Baiano – TSB

Abstract

Water is a crucial element for the reproduction of life, as well as a strategic means of domination, generation of wealth, and sovereignty. As an emerging theme in the world and also in Brazil, and in its semi-arid region, especially in the structural condition of the water problem, public policies of civil and state prominence have acted in the relationship of access by the population. The Southwest Bahia Identity Territory (TSB) becomes, in this study, the interlocutor of public water policies with a view to the water dynamics that involve, especially rural areas. The main objective of the thesis is to analyze the processes that converge to the permanence and urgency of public policies on access to water in the TSB and, substantially, the obstacles relating to development actions, as well as gaps in the process of implementing these policies. The theoretical bases are the preamble to understanding the object of analysis and in this study, they are reflections on the production of nature as a commodity under the aegis of capital and water as a metamorphosis from its use value to its exchange value in the course of capitalist social relations and domination of nature. The analysis of the state in relation to capitalist agents is part of an ever larger and unilateral structure. When approaching to the Brazilian Northeast as a locus in regional development policy, policies to combat drought and the legacies linked to the concentration of land and water to the proposal for coexistence with the semi-arid region made reveals the aforementioned region the locus of public policies that are sometimes centralized, sometimes democratic, and in both cases, they present cyclical issues involving access to water in the semi-arid region. The methodological pathway consists of a bibliographical survey, field research using photographs, interviews, application of questionnaires, documentary research and collection of information on official websites and, subsequently, the organization and analysis of the material to make considerations and prove the permanence and urgency of public policies on access to water in the TSB. In the constructed debate, analyzes regarding the insufficient action of the state with regard to the promotion of public policies for universal access to water and the continuation of mitigating practices without structural understanding of the water issue became evident, in the same way that civil society organizations have contributed to the state arrangement to reduce the daily difficulties of rural families through social technologies. However, the challenges bring the urgency of this issue, given the need to expand such policies with a view to developing rural areas and family farming. Furthermore, the debate on the dismantling of public policies is presented in the face of the instability of the Brazilian state for not accepting the demands for water in the semi-arid region as state policy, which makes it necessary and more complex to understand that programs alone are not sufficient, while contributing to the construction of permanence. Nevertheless, a correlation is made between the Portuguese context of the “Baixo Alentejo” and the TSB with a view to expanding readings on access to water, as well as the urgent dimension of public policies in the face of the climate change scenario.