Sustainable life, not sustainable development - “Other” epistemologies in sanitation policy in Rural Brazil : The case of Brazil’s National Program for Rural Sanitation

Sammanfattning: Despite decades of global efforts to provide the whole of the world’s population with appropriated water and sanitation, these remain one of the biggest challenges of our time, with the gap being even greater in rural areas. Commonly dominated by technological and managerialist solutions, the field of water and sanitation have been subject, since its origins, to rationalities grounded in western knowledge. As a result, approaches to the topic tends to disregard deeper relationships between the social world and its historical, political, economic and cultural realizations. While many discuss water and sanitation in terms of supply, others indicate how current shortcomings are more related to power structures. Universal paradigms in water and sanitation constitutes epistemological hegemony. The present thesis explores, based on a decolonial and Latin-American political ecology framework, how dominant rationalities contribute for a great share of people around the globe to remain without access to water and sanitation. Taking as a case study Brazil’s National Program for Rural Sanitation (PNSR – in Portuguese), the thesis investigates its formulation process to understand how its constitution and final product represent alternative epistemologies, also presenting its relationships with the pursuit of sustainability. Four elements of the PNSR’s formulation are especially highlighted: the engagement with social movements; the openness to a dialogue of knowledges; the participative and qualitative methods; and, the shared approaches to sustainability. Discussions draw upon the importance of questioning dominant epistemologies; recognizing the linkages between health, sanitation, conflict and resistance in rural Brazil; and, constructing sustainability as a space for the encounter of different rationalities.