Polycentric governance and scale challenges in water management in the semi-arid river basin of Banabuiú, Ceará, Brazil

Water scarcity and drought are sustainability issues that cut across borders and different scales and levels of organizations and cannot be designated to one governmental authority. Due to hydrological droughts in semi-arid Northeast Brazil, the region deals with water scarcity. In the case of Ceará state, water is stored in multiple reservoirs as part of a water supply system and is managed from different levels of organization. These are considered governance scales that include state level-, regional level- and municipal level institutions, local level communities, and individual households. Water management in Ceará is an example of how polycentric governance brings a multifold of governmental and non-governmental actors together for the management of public goods in the society, and therefore cross-scale and cross-level interactions are inevitable. However, a variety of multiple challenges of contradictory water policies, diverse and varying levels of water users and multiple overlapping governance systems and organizations in combination with resource depletion make equitable water allocation challenging in Ceará. For this reason, this research aims to examine the scale mismatches in the water management processes and level misalignments of different governance levels and understand the influences of multiple governance systems on collectively managing water for equal water allocation. The following research question is used: What are the scale mismatches in water management and the misalignments of levels in water governance in Ceará state, and how have these affected the equitable access to water by different groups?

A polycentric governance lens is used to understand the interplay and influences of multiple water governance systems with competitive and cooperative relationships over water resources. We analyzed the multiple scale challenges in water management in the Banabuiú basin in the state of Ceará, using minutes from official water committee meetings, and qualitative data from interviews conducted with smallholder farmers, field technicians, civil servants and researchers in November and December 2021.

Literature research and fieldwork interviews in Ceará provided insights into user conflicts and mismatches across varying scales and levels. Our results show that, at river basin levels, e.g., networks of reservoirs and the river basin of Banabuiú, conflicts of prioritization between small-scale farmers and urban water users occur when the metropolitan area of Fortaleza is prioritized. Prioritization of the metropolitan region has been shown to result in limited and non-participatory decision-making, lack of information sharing and restrictions for irrigated farmers at the local scale. At the local scale, state interference in water management is in some cases not appropriate to the local context or in accordance with local knowledge. These scale mismatches occur due to multiple types of local water management, lack of responsibility for the management of monitored and unmonitored reservoirs, and various overlapping assisting agencies at the community level. The cross-scale interactions and conflicts in water management systems highlight the interdependencies between stakeholders and scale challenges in socio-hydrological systems.