O caminho das águas: tecnologias de convivência com o semiárido e transições sociotécnicas no sertão brasileiro

Abstract

The implementation of governmental programs of decentralization of water access and management stands as an important chapter in the recent trajectory of state intervention in the Brazilian semi-arid region. Public policies such as the One Million Cisterns Program (P1MC) and the One Land and Two Waters Program (P1 + 2), proposed by the Articulação Semiárido Brasileiro (ASA -Articulation in the Brazilian Semi-arid), undergo, currently, a process of consolidation as innovative experiences of social participation in the formulation and implementation of public policies. Several technologies developed as a result of historical processes of interaction established between sertanejo peasants and nature in the semi-arid region, or generated in the realm of civil society organizations or research institutions, started to be developed as an alternative to the hegemonic model of State intervention centered in large scale development projects oriented by the concept of “drought combat”. ASA was a fundamental actor in the recovery, systematization, valuing and development of several technologies, presented as an alternative to large scale engineering works historically advocated by public policies. ASA's work and the critique of social organizations against the criticism of the drought combat model placed the technological issue at the center of public debate. In a context of enhancing interactions between civil society and the State, enabled by the political democratization of the country, this debate reached the spaces of policy formulation. In the present work, we will try to understand the trajectory of construction of public policies oriented by the approach of coexistence with the semi-arid and how the interactions established between the public power and civil society organizations, influenced the generation, dissemination and institutionalization of the technologies proposed by P1MC and P1 + 2. As conceptual references, we used approaches related to the field of Social Studies on Science and Technology, particularly social constructivism and the Muti-level Perspective. Research methods encompassed interviews with key stakeholders involved in the process of formulation and implementation of the studied policies, analyzing, as well, audit documentation, meeting minutes and technical and executive projects related to the various phases of implementation of the programs analyzed. The research findings show that the interaction between civil society and the State in the legislation process constitutes a key arena in the pattern making and manualization procedures of the technologies of coexistence with the semi-arid