OCCASIONAL PAPER Access to Water Supply and Sanitation in Brazil: Historical and Current Reflections; Future Perspectives

Access to water supply and sanitation in Brazil: Historical and current reflections; future perspectives Léo Heller The paper provides an analytical description of water supply and sanitation in Brazil. While acknowledging the fragility and imprecision of available quantitative indicators, particularly in measuring service coverage, it attempts to identify trends. A description of the sector’s evolution is included which seeks to identify milestones along the way that present obstacles and opportunities for the current day. Experiments are described—municipal cooperatives and experiments, state company experiments and the condominial system—that may be considered successful and supply paradigms for a new scenario. Finally, there is a look ahead to possible scenarios for the future, based on the current legal and politico-institutional landscape. In this connection the paper highlights the federal government’s bill for Law no. 5.296 and the potential it has to supply what th