Integrating land tenure, infrastructure and water catchment management in São Paulo’s periphery: lessons from a gaming approach

Abstract

Much of São Paulo's urban expansion is driven by the development of informal settlements on its periphery, which includes the catchment areas that provide important environmental services such as open space and catchments for drinking water reservoirs. In such areas, governance of land, water services and water resources, traditionally administered separately, are in fact interdependent. A role-playing game was built to explore the interactions between different actors (mayor, water company, district representatives and landowners of different types) in land tenure insecurity, water and sanitation infrastructure and pollution in the periphery of São Paulo. An assessment of the game sessions revealed the different points of view of local and institutional actors about the main issues and the possible negotiation arrangements. Institutional actors misunderstood the hierarchy and diversity of community actors' preoccupations, which were related more to land tenure, access to public transport and other aspects such as health and education rather than to water and sanitation infrastructure. Institutional actors also failed to recognize how access to infrastructure and land tenure is shaped by power-based relationships. While community actors appreciated the game and felt that they had learned from the experiment, institutional actors were more critical. These discrepancies call into question the potential effectiveness of the legal, technical and institutional solutions that the institutional actors are promoting to address the pollution issue. KEYWORDS infrastructure / land tenure / peri-urban area / pollution / roleplaying game / sanitation / São Paulo Raphaèle Ducrot works with CIRAD, UMR G-eau (Fortaleza, Brazil, and Montpellier, France); also with FUNCEME (Fortaleza-CE, Brazil). Her research deals with social simulation for governance and collective decision-making regarding water.

La interrelación entre los espacios abiertos y los recursos hídricos urbanos: una revisión sistemática de la literatura

“…Apesar de não estar entre os artigos mais citados, é importante destacar o artigo desenvolvido no Brasil, por abordar uma realidade local. Desenvolvido por Ducrot et al (2010), o artigo traz um estudo de caso na região periférica de São Paulo. Nele é discutido como grande parte da expansão urbana de São Paulo é impulsionada pelo desenvolvimento de assentamentos informais em sua periferia, o que inclui as bacias hidrográficas que fornecem importantes serviços ambientais.…”

Land tenure in Brazil: The question of regulation and governance

“…Land can be used by its owner for production or simply for speculation. The rules for effective regulation of the land market would require Brazilian society to engage in land governance and decide on the most suitable use for the land, balancing social and economic development with environmental protection (Ducrot et al, 2005(Ducrot et al, , 2010. However, the first step towards improving land governance in Brazil is to understand the present structure of the land market or agrarian policy and its potential for change.…”