TERRITORIALITY AND GEOCARTOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS: SCALES OF INTERPRETATION AS A TOOL FOR THE UNDERSTANDING OF WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT CONFLICTS

摘要

This paper presents a proposal, based on geocartography, for the understanding of water use conflicts and for the mitigation of water resources management problems resultant from these conflicts. The development is based in the results of prior investigations that show the water use conflicts as an obstacle for the politics of water resources management in Brazil. This can be justified because, although the water laws in Brazil bring as a basis the decentralized and part icipative management, with "down to top" directives and large participation of the users, there are evidences of resistance by the users in participate of the management proj ects. Along the development of works in the Sossego river hydrographic basin, in Itarana muni cipality, Espirito Santo state, Brazil, this reality has been confirmed. It was also possible to identify that the resistance of the local population to the management projects is justified because of divergences about the meanings of water and management when talking about local population, public politics and managers. Certainly the politics and management proposals are explicit in the Brazilian water laws itself, as well as in the directives proposed from the laws objectives, and point to the pr eservation and sustainability of the use of an economic and environmentally valuable resource. Ho wever in what concerns the hydrographic basins populations, more specifically in the rural regions, the meanings of water and its use, as well as the meaning of your preservation, did not converge with the environmental and economical logic of the state. This divergence, usually treated as a water use and management conflict, char acterize an obstacle for the management because the resistance of local groups in participate mine the basis of management in the country, which is supposed to be decentral ized and participative. Prior works reveal that the resistance is real a nd, in the case of Sossego river hydrographic basin, results of different and complicated conflicts that include familiar inheritances questions, municipality politics questions and even differences in the land use objectives by the rural producers. Starting from this inform ation, is proposed a geocartographycal analysis of this reality as a way to understand the basis of the conflicts and, in this way, minimize the effects over the management. The objective is to know the local values and meanings of water uses and water management using different spatial materializations of the basin. It means to make a spatial reading of the conflict from the different uses, occupations and population characteristics distributed along the basin territory. The analysis starts from the delimitation of different territorialities of the hydrographic basin, using spatial coherence cutouts according to the distinct uses, occupations and population characteristics. The spatial coherence cutouts enable different interpretation scales of the reality, making easy to understand the conflicts and to map the different territorialities. In this way, it allows the spatial readings of these territorialities, revealing the sources of the resistance and of the management conflicts.The reading of the relations between the local values and the resistance or not in participate in the management can validate the geocartographycal analysis as an interesting tool for the management. By the other hand the use of interpretation scales and territorialities readings by the geocartography is a rele vant proposal to revise the cartographic practices and uses that condition Cartesian readings of the space, even in situations where it does not permit relevant analysis.