Water Conflicts in Santa Catarina

a reflection from the social and environmental ethical perspective

Abstract

The paper presents a reflection based on a study on law court decisions issued by the Santa Catarina Court of Justice regarding the socio-environmental conflicts about water in this state, emphasizing the cases involving the installation of hydroelectric plants that affect riverine populations. The study found that is a very small portion of conflicts that effectively reach judicialization. These conflicts often receive treatment based on a type of legal argument that associates the general interest of the community with the interests of the power companies. As a result, the rights of affected riverine and artisanal fishers are underestimated or treated as irrelevant. Based on these data, is made a socio-environmental ethical analysis showing that: the prevailing argument presupposes an instrumental reduction of the river to a merely energy-generating entity and that there is an argumentative space to be traced defending the rivers as entities whose value It is not reduced to that easily instrumentalized by the market, which enables the valuation of multiple and diverse forms of coexistence with the river, and which guarantees human and non-human interests.