Modelo de cobrança pelo uso da água: relação com conservação de serviços ambientais e eficiência de sistemas

Abstract

For several authors, sustainable development is a permanent process of improvement and expansion of economic, social and environmental assets conducted in a harmonious, parsimonious and equitable manner, distributed in space and time. The approach built around water resources has evolved from practical thinking, with a purely economic and non-preservationist character, to a holistic view, in which management must integrate the economic, political and social aspects, that is, in addition to providing conditions for economic development, must guarantee water security to the population. Thus, regulatory instruments are presented as possibilities for the resolution and prevention of conflicts regarding their multiple uses, being the ideal economic instruments for this purpose, since, in addition to raising resources to give financial support to the management of water resources, it re-educates and rationalizes the patterns of water consumption by the population. Among the main uses of water, human supply and irrigated agriculture stand out, responsible for a large part of the capture, use and waste due to the lack of efficiency in their systems. It is in this reality of inefficiency in drinking water distribution systems, lack of technical and spatial planning of irrigated agriculture and absence of the instrument of charging for the use of water that the Jacarecica river sub-basin, inserted in the hydrographic region of the Sergipe river, is inserted. Given the above, the study developed a model of charging for the use of water for human supply and irrigated agriculture, considering the local hydrological particularities and using payment for environmental services as an incentive to the instrument. The present study can be characterized as a qualitative approach research carried out from the exploratory, experimental and longitudinal method, and its conceptual basis is anchored in how the rebate of the payment received by the provider of the environmental service in the amount charged for the use of water can come to encourage the implementation of charging and how the same instrument, when associated with efficiency and performance indices in the water supply system, can stimulate the reduction of losses and improvements in the system as a whole. Among the results found, it can be highlighted that, over the years, studies began to propose a methodology for pricing water and began to accept informality in its definition; that irrigated agriculture has a collection value proportional to its negligible use compared to uses prioritized by law due to the low value of its public unit price (PU); and that efficiency in human supply and irrigation systems is linked to performance indicators associated with water losses and electricity costs, thus disregarding the level of education of those responsible for managing and distributing water. Among the conclusions presented in the work, it is noted that the amount collected by the proposed equation is insufficient to meet most of the goals of the basin plan for the region, which confirms the importance of charging the other uses granted in the basin and updating the PU in a function not only of the user's economic collection potential, but also of the activity's potential for environmental damage; and that the implementation of the seasonal grant will result in great environmental benefits, despite resulting in a lower collection potential, since the capture of water in the rainy season would be lower.