Sustainable water services and interaction with water resources in Europe and in Brazil

International audienceThe increasing interaction between large cities and nature makes "urban water" an issue: water resources and water services - including public water supply, sewage collection and treatment, and in large cities, storm water control -, which had become separate issues thanks to the process of water transport and treatment technologies, are now increasingly interfering with each other. We cannot take nature for granted anymore, and we need to protect water resources, if only to reduce the long term cost of transporting and treating water. In this paper, we compare the historical development of water industry technologies in European and Brazilian metropolitan areas, in their socio-economic and political context, tracing it through three "ages" of water technology and services which developed under civil engineering, sanitary engineering, and environmental engineering perspectives: the "quantity of water" and civil engineering paradigm was developed on the assumption that water should be drawn from natural environments far from the cities; in the "water quality" and chemical/sanitation engineering paradigm, water treatment was invented and allowed cities to take water from rivers closer to them and treat it, but also to reduce sewer discharge impacts; finally, the environmental engineering paradigm proposes to overcome the supply side perspective, by introducing demand side management, water conservation, water allocation flexibilisation, and an integrated approach to water services, water resources management, and land use policies

Uso e gestão da água: desafios para a sustentabilidade no meio rural.

Apresenta o processo de degradação dos serviços ecossistêmicos hidrológicos, bem como faz recomendações relativas ao uso e manejo conservacionista do solo e da água e discute os instrumentos de gestão da água, apontando os principais desafios com vistas à sustentabilidade no meio rural

Uso e gestão da água: desafios para a sustentabilidade no meio rural.

Apresenta o processo de degradação dos serviços ecossistêmicos hidrológicos, bem como faz recomendações relativas ao uso e manejo conservacionista do solo e da água e discute os instrumentos de gestão da água, apontando os principais desafios com vistas à sustentabilidade no meio rural.Made available in DSpace on 2018-01-12T23:15:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2017043.pdf: 454339 bytes, checksum: 24a83f5cc43905ac795c76c59658b1d7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-11-23bitstream/item/167338/1/2017-043.pd

The development of water services and their interaction with water resources in European and Brazilian cities

International audienceThe extension and complexity of large cities creates "urban water" and a related issue: public water services, including public water supply, sewage collection and treatment, and storm water control, had previously become a policy sector separate from water resource allocation issues thanks to water transport and treatment technologies. Large metropolitan areas today cannot take nature for granted any-more, and they need to protect water resources, if only to reduce the long term cost of transporting and treating water. In this paper, we compare the historical development of water services in European and Brazilian metropolitan areas, placing the technological developments in their geographic, socio-economic and political contexts. Our frame is to follow the successive contributions of civil engineering, sanitary engineering, and environmental engineering: the "quantity of water" and civil engineering paradigm allowed to mobilise water in and out of the city, and up the hills or the floors; in the "water quality" and chemical/sanitary engineering paradigm, water treatment gave more freedom to cities to take water from rivers closer to them, but also to reduce sewer discharge impacts; lastly, the environmental engineering paradigm proposes to overcome the supply side perspective, by introducing demand side management, water conservation, water allocation flexibilisation, and an integrated approach to water services, water resources management, and land use policies

Muddy Waters: The Political Construction of Deliberative River Basin Governance in Brazil

Over the last two decades, numerous international conferences and organizations have espoused managing water as an economic good, involving participatory forums in systems of decentralized management at the river-basin level. In the 1990s, Brazil adopted such a model. More than a simple transfer of power from the national to the local level or from bureaucratic to deliberative decision-making, however, this process requires "multi-directional power transfers" among a variety of policy arenas and actors and among national, state, municipal and river-basin institutions, as well as a complex - and ongoing - negotiation over the meanings of both water pricing and participation. Focusing on the politics of reform legislation in the state of São Paulo and nationally, the article examines how political-institutional features of federalism and executive-legislative relations constrained the passage of reform legislation, and how pro-reform actors attempted to surmount such institutional limitations with networking strategies and by fostering incremental changes in practices on the ground. Copyright (c) 2006 The Authors. Journal Compilation (c) 2006 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd..