Managing Waters of the Paraíba do Sul River Basin, Brazil: a Case Study in Institutional Change and Social Learning

Abstract

This article examines the implementation of integrated water-management institutions in the Paraíba do Sul River basin in southeast Brazil. It argues that social learning has been critical in facilitating reform implementation so far, and will likely continue to be an important factor for the future sustainability of the new management system. There has been a synergistic relationship between social learning and Brazil's water-reform hybrid governance institutions, in which social learning facilitated the implementation of the reform's new institutions, which in turn enabled further learning in the context of the river basin committee's decision-making process. Through interviews, surveys, and observations, we identified social-learning capacities, including trust, an ability to work together, and the committee's shared understanding of the institution's problems, possibilities, and mission. Effective management through social learning was demonstrated by the institution's adaptive capacity in the face of a severe drought.

Measuring the dimensions of adaptive capacity: a psychometric approach

“…Institutional conditions supportive of adaptive capacity include widely accepted attributes of good governance (Nelson et al 2007, Vincent 2007, Kumler and Lemos 2008, Engle and Lemos 2010. Specifications of good governance have been offered in the form of principles with international reach (UNDP 1997, Kaufmann et al 2003), requirements for effective common-property governance (Ostrom 1990), and context-specific treatments of sustainability (MSRM 2004) and protected areas (Graham et al 2003, Lockwood 2010.…”

Water: Drought, Crisis and Governance in Australia and Brazil

“…In 2004, when the region faced one of its most severe drought periods, several conflicts related to water allocation emerged, making the watershed committee a legitimate place for discussing them. Social learning had an important role at that time, making it possible to organize a cooperative network and establish a set of shared goals involving the main stakeholders in the process [73]. A substantial social learning process achieved by technicians acting inside the watershed committee for years, and the social network built across the participant states, allowed them to organize a well-established drought task force responsible to generate the information base for decision-making on water allocation [25].…”

Assessing the Role of Socio-Ecological Learning in Participatory Governance: Building Resilience in Six Brazilian River Basin Committees

“…Watershed collaboration literature points out how difficult it is to identify objective measures of social learning (Kumler & Lemos, 2008;Mostert et al, 2008), especially since the configuration of issues, participants, policies and support is different in each case. However, reviewing the work of GTHIDRO with six water basin communities, where policy and legal support are the same, provides us with a sense of continuity in the use of a model for resource governance built specifically on social learning.…”

“…The Brazilian government has created a bundle of federal laws focused on water as a common or shared good and the social participation of stakeholders in their implementation: the National Laws of Sustainable Development, Environmental Education, Water Resources, Conservation Units, and City Statute, which together create an integrated vision of development of natural resources. The Brazilian reform contains the tenets of good governance with the creation of multiple, redundant, and polycentric scales of management, as well as the inclusion of hybrid mechanisms of governance that combine state, market, and community institutions and actors (Kumler & Lemos, 2008;Lemos & Agrawal, 2006;Ostrom, 2001Ostrom, , 2005. The new water management model focuses on the river basin committee composed of representatives from water user groups, government, and organized civil society, with participatory or "social" learning as a key method for implementing this water policy within the context of sustainable development.…”