A institucionalização da questão ambiental no Brasil: modernização ecológica e gestão regional de recursos nos projetos de transposição e revitalização do Rio São Francisco.

Abstract

This thesis work analyzes the ways in which the institutionalization of Brazilian environmental issues has been happening by incorporating concerns related to nature conservation in state projects, policies and actions. It is assumed that the amplitude, variability and multiplicity of meanings associated with environmental problems arise from discursive and political disputes about strategies of nature conservation and appropriate economic and institutional instruments to deal with what has been defined as environmental crisis in the context of advanced capitalist societies. Therefore, it was used the official documents related to the Project for the Integration of the São Francisco River with the Water Drainage Basins of the Northern Northeast of Brazil (PISF) and to the São Francisco River Revitalization Program (PRSF), besides other documents, that support a development policy for the northeast semiarid region, testimonials from leaders of social movements, and from other actors, that stand out in the debate on the transposition of the São Francisco River. It was sought to perceive meanings that the environmental issue takes when it is incorporated into the PISF and PRSF, as well as the symbolic dispute between actors involved in the transposition and revitalization. Evidence bring at least two ways of thinking about the dynamics of incorporation of environmental issues in such state actions, promoting what has been called in thesis of "greening of state projects": an "ecological", facing the river recovery and maintenance of a dynamic of subsistence, and one that would be "economic", with a set of actions to renew the river, allowing the management and rational use of its resources. In this context, it seems that prevails a notion of rational use of resources, with a strong adjustment to assumptions of ecological modernization.