Basic Sanitation Policy in Brazil: ideas, institutions and challenges in the Twenty-first Century

Abstract

This paper describes the challenges currently facing Brazil’s basic sanitation sector. The sector’s characteristic profitability and dyna-mism have brought State-run Water & Sewage (W&S) services into the spotlight of the struc-tural reform agenda on the argument that gov-ernments do not have the resources necessary to universalize coverage. There is a pattern of W&S services’ operating with a surplus, which helps ex-plain the intense dispute in recent years in favour of legal changes to the market position of CESBs and local providers to favour an expanding role for private agents. Converging with the struc-tural reform agenda, Law 14,026, sanctioned on 15 July 2020, made far-reaching changes to the legal framework for sanitation and provid-ed for the State’s complete withdrawal from the sector. The new regulatory framework prohibited programme contracts, required tender processes for sanitation service contracts, encouraged regionalization without CESBs, set out national guidelines for States and municipalities to access federal funding and introduced a national regula-tion regime under the National Waters and Basic Sanitation Agency. The model of cooperation that operates in the SUS could serve as a reference for constructing a social pact in the sector.