BARBOSA, Roberta Lima.
Abstract:
The water right grant is a fundamental and important instrument to water resources
management, as it ensures the quantity and quality control of water uses, as well as the rights
of access to the resource. In Brazil, water right grant is ruled by the Federal Law 9.433/97, by
specific state laws for the establishment of policies for a system management, such as Paraiba
State Law 6.308/96, and by decrees. However, the water right grant is not an instrument of
easy implementation or administration because of the increasing demands and conflicting
water users’ interests. Moreover, current water right grant studies existing in most of
Brazilian states are based on a purely quantitative analysis of the available water resources.
However, it is known that the problems of water scarcity are increasing and many river basins
have limited the water right grants. In the near future, most of water right grants will have to
be reviewed as the water requests are greater than the water availability. Therefore, besides de
mere quantity, the water right grant analyses should be based on more restrictive criteria,
which take into account aspects such as environmental, economic, cultural and social. A
rather complete analysis in this sense can be performed by the multicriterial or multiobjective
analysis that present a set of methods to allow the simultaneous handling of several aspects in
a decision-making process. In this context, the objective of this study is to examine the
influence on the decision making process regarding to the application of a multicriteria
method on the best water users rank choice for water right grants concession for the Curema-
Mãe D’Água reservoirs system. The PROMETHEE method was used to examine and rank 11
alternatives of water right grants for different water users, which were based on de judgment
of 8 criteria. Based on the results, a study of the water demands attendance reliability and the
dynamic behavior of the Curema-Mãe D'Água system of reservoirs were performed. It was
concluded that multicriterial methods can help decision makers to rank river basin water right
grants concession in order to adequate water allocation to water users demands in terms of the
priorities of the management or collegiate related sectors, as, for instance, the AESA, CERH,
river basin committee, and so on, the ones established in Director Plans or to protect or force
the development of certain water related activities that are import for the region.
