Browsing by Author "Jacobi, Pedro Roberto"

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Challenges to Promote a Common Approach: Dialogue on Water Governance in São Paulo Macrometropolis (Brazil)
(2019) Jacobi, Pedro Roberto; Torres, Pedro; Rotondaro, Tatiana; Milz, Beatriz; Haddad, Camila; Alonso, Lidiane
"Brazil has been suffering serious situations of water scarcity in several regions, and the most dramatic case was the recent (2014-2015) drought in the São Paulo Macrometropolis, which comprises more than 170 municipalities (including São Paulo metropolitan region) and more than 35 million inhabitants. Water scarcity in this region, due to increasingly unsustainable water use is affected mainly by two factors: the rise of climate impacts and pollution of water sources (linked to deficit sanitation services). This is directly related to the impacts of the ecosystems’ deterioration caused by the asymmetric conditions of urbanization and unequal access to drinking water and basic sanitation. This consideration leads us to dialogue with the contemporary debates on water as a commons or commodity, related to the dynamics of sharing of responsibility for water supply between the state, the private sector, and the citizens. These debates on the conflicting approaches over water supply governance take place between the public utility, the private sector, and a new culture of water based on strong considerations on sustainability and equitable access. In this paper we analyze the impacts of the water crisis and the potential of strengthening initiatives to advance in policies that emphasize a logic of commons. The National Water Law in Brazil has existed since 1997. It incorporates modern water resources management principles. The need to manage conflicts arising from water use priorities led to incorporate civil society actors within “Water basin committees”, created by this law. Water governance thus needs to tackle sustainability and social aspects, leaving behind the managerial perspective. Also, the National Law defines the river basin as a territorial unit for water territorial planning, and water as a scarce resource which has economic value, identifying multiple uses and user rights."
Ostrom Meets the Urban Global-South
(2019) Frey, Klaus; Torres, Pedro; Ramos, Ruth Ferreira; Jacobi, Pedro Roberto
"Elinor Ostrom’s research related to the possibilities of cooperation, supported by commonly defined rules and institutional diversity, as an alternative or complementary tool to state and market mechanisms, has proved particularly convincing in governing collectively common-pool resources at the local level and in the rural world. The more complex “social dilemma situations” and political decision arenas are and exogenous variables have to be considered, the more difficult it is to explain why particular political behavior and outcomes occur. In this contribution, we argue that Ostrom’s assumptions related to rational behavior, as the basis of game theory, only very boundedly apply to the context of metropolises in the Global South, marked by extreme biophysical, institutional, and cultural diversity, as well as extreme asymmetrical power relations and, thus, political conflict structures, rendering a direct application of her framework difficult. Considering the example of the São Paulo Macrometropilis (Brazil), we point out some of these biophysical, institutional, cultural and political particularities/complexities in order to evidence the challenge of polycentric governance based on cooperation and commonly decided rules in an adverse sociopolitical context, concluding with some arising challenges for an ongoing research project on environmental governance in the metropolis of São Paulo in the context of climate variability."