A água só corre para o mar: um estudo sobre a participação popular no município de Sumé - PB no Comitê de Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio Paraíba.

Abstract

This work sought to understand how popular participation in the water management of the Paraíba River Basin Committee – CBH-PB takes place. Specifically, we seek to understand how the CBH-PB was formed; we studied how, throughout the existence of the CBH-PB (2007-2022), the municipality of Sumé was represented in it and we also investigated whether this territory was guided in its ordinary and extraordinary meetings; and we analyzed the degree of knowledge of the riverside population of the municipality of Sumé-PB about CBH-PB. As a theoretical framework, we take as a basis the historical-dialectical materialism thought by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, based on what they called the materialist conception of history. According to this conception, the social changes that take place over the course of a society's history are not determined by ideas or values, but are influenced by material reality, that is, the economic situation of the actors in the society in question. To investigate the topic addressed, we used as sources the internal regulations, the minutes, the deliberations and the public notices of the CBH-PB, in addition to journalistic articles and interviews with deponents of the water user segment (peasants). From the readings of our sources, at first, we have the understanding that popular participation in the CBH (composed of 60 members) takes place in a secondary way, that is, it exists only for the record, not being a majority or even equal to the other holdings. Thus, we found that the majority force in the management of the waters of the Paraíba River is the capital represented by the landowner and industrial sectors.