Le grand projet du président Lula : le détournement polémique des eaux du São Francisco

Abstract

For the last two centuries, water scarcity in the «Half-barren» region of Brazilian’s Northeast is primarily responsible for regional inequalities. In the beginning of the 20th century, critical thought reoriented this debate, focusing on power structures, based upon land concentration and on the political domination of agrarian proprietors, supported by governments, as the cause of the process of exclusion and poverty in agricultural areas. Government policy based their strategy on the performance of major works "to fight drought" and "to modernize" that region. Sustainable development, defended by the labor movement, is articulated around the notion of local development, proposing "new solutions" for the old problem of drought in a "living with the semi-aridity" approach. In this article, we analyze the contradictions of development policies presented by President Lula’s government, revealed through the clash between its proposals and those of the social movement. We focus on the Integration Project of the São Francisco basin to the Northeast’s hydrographical basins (PISF), implemented by the Federal Government as part of its strategy to improve regional development.

Keywords

• development
• drought
• regional development
• public policy