Environmental conflicts and water management: problems of supply, urbanization and mining in Viçosa, MG

Abstract

This work analyzes water issues in the context of capitalist production of urban space, parting from the hypothesis that the current crisis has its origins in the transformation of the natural world as a result of this process. In this context, environmental conflicts are used as analytical tools to identify limitations of current procedures of water management. Through three conflicts around water supply, urban expansion in rural areas and the installation of a slurry pipeline in the municipality of Viçosa, Minas Gerais, have been identified the legitimizing discourses of the different perspectives in dispute. It was shown that water management to solve these problems through ecological modernization is a fragmented view disconnected from the spatialities and territorialities which appeared through the conflicts. A second finding refers to the fact that the so called technical and scientific rationality is employed in service of capitalist production of space while the rights of people with locally embedded livelihoods are being denied.