Vulnerabilidade e gestão hídrica superficial na poção mineira da bacia hidrográfica do rio Jequitinhonha

Abstract

The Jequitinhonha River Basin is marked by changes in the use and coverage of its land encouraged by state actions, resisting low socio-economic development rates due to its water vulnerability. With relatively recent Water Resources Master Plans and limited implementation of water resource management instruments, this research seeks to evaluate water quality, availability and demand data in the CH's JQ1, JQ2 and JQ3, the scenario revealed by the variables associated with scarcity, beyond the physical, but also the economic scope of water. The water crisis has permeated the Jequitinhonha Valley for more than 300 years in the history of Minas Gerais, an obstacle that requires the effective participation of the state in the fight for procedural and deliberative democracy, bringing citizens and public authorities closer together in water management, which is a global concern. In order to investigate the context faced by the people of Minas Gerais, the methodological proposal of this research, based on the theoretical-conceptual frameworks of Water Security and Socio-hydrology, encompassed the mutual relationship between human beings and water, from the perspective that a society must have sufficient quality water to meet its basic, economic and social needs. Geographical analysis operations in the Geographical Information System (GIS) included the diagnosis of the physical-geographical and environmental components (geological characteristics, relief aspects, soil classes, climatic conditions and land cover and use), as well as the availability of surface water, the demands for water use and the quality of surface water, used to obtain the qualitative and quantitative surface water vulnerability of the mining portion of the watershed assessed. The results, integrated with environmental policy instruments, suggest the primacy of structural and non-structural intervention measures as procedures to be applied, since the co-production of solutions can result in more effective proposals, where human beings and their activities are endogenous to the dynamics of the hydrological cycle.