Entre escassez, prioridades e negociações: a COGERH e os trajetos e destinos das águas que vêm do Sertão para a Metrópole

Abstract

This thesis addresses the relationship between the State, represented by the Water Resources Company of the State of Ceará – COGERH (Companhia de Recursos Hídricos do Estado do Ceará) and the participants assembled in the Provisional Committee for the Monitoring of the Operation of Vale do Jaguaribe and Banabuiú (2012-2017), with the purpose of understanding how COGERH, from the water shortage, and in conjunction with that network of participants, establishes the propositions and sets the priorities to handle water management in the context of the process of Negotiated Allocation of Water. A state act which creates a hearing arena, disputes, and conclusion of agreements concerning access and distribution of water which runs from the Brazilian Outback (Sertão) to Fortaleza and its Metropolitan Area. An act which constitutes the management model of Ceará built under the tripod (university, local consulting services and World Bank) and which turns the State of Ceará into a laboratory for the implementation of the managerial model, in which water gains space in the neoliberal agenda, next to the decentralization as a strategy to approach the problem, thematized by public policy, and the management. In order to do so, I chose to emphasize the processes and the people, based on the social knowledge of the research interlocutors and in the observations born from field immersion due to my understanding that, from the connections, the knowledge and the experience the participants forge, locally, a management model to implement the policy of the water in the State of Ceará, defining the uses and paths of a public good, marked by a paradoxical interaction between democracy and inequality of access to the water, which triggers classification fights, and by acknowledgement in a competition that has as background the connection between water shortage, negotiation and priority.