Management of water resources in Brazil: a historical

Water is an essential resource for life, but it is finite, and in several regions of the world conflicts are already observed due to its scarcity. The preservation of this resource and the guarantee of its access to all is one of the current goals of human kind. This article aims to analyze the evolution of water resources management in Brazil and to reflect how the study of the use of water in the past allows a better planning of the future and its use in a more sustainable way. Bibliographical and documentary researches of qualitative nature were carried out. Water management in Brazil is not a recent phenomenon, and can already be observed since the colonial period. The low income population has always been the most disadvantaged with the supply. Water has been constantly exploited as an economic resource without concern for its preservation. Currently, the integrated water resources management model, introduced by the Law 9.433/1997, establishes the importance of matching demand with water supply, ensuring the sustainable use and distribution to the entire population. Brazilian legislation is considered the most advanced in the world for water resources management, but it is necessary to guarantee its effectiveness in practice. To achieve this goal, it is necessary consider that not only physical scarcity, but also political and socioeconomic inequalities influence access to water. It is concluded that access to water, beyond fisical and climatic limitations, is related to historically established inequalities between social groups and to a process of appropriation of common resources, in the service of an unequal and exclusive development.