Conflicts over access to water: impacts of the Transposition of the São Francisco River into Lafa yete Rural Productive Village, Monteiro/PB, Brazil

Abstract

The project to transpose the waters of the São Francisco River was conceived with the objective of guaranteeing water security in the semiarid region. However, the work promoted a significant change in terms of social reorganization along the channels, affecting, directly or indirectly, traditional communities and populations in their ways of life and social relations, as well as access to water, land use and aspects related to production. This article proposes to reflect on the impacts of this project and its relation with water access deprivation, by affected families, and the socio-environmental conflicts resulting from compulsory displacement and resettlement of the impacted populations. For that, the approach to socio-environmental conflicts was used, in the sense that a large part of the project's burden fell on a specific social group - in this case, the local populations. The study carried out (through a questionnaire and observations) with the families resettled in Lafayete Rural Productive Village , municipality of Monteiro (PB), showed that, even though they were benefited (with the village located on the margins of the construction channels), the families were deprived of access to water for almost three years after arriving at the resettlement, demonstrating the neglect of government actions with traditional populations in the context of major development projects.