The National Policy on Agroecology and Organic Production from the perspective of the water-energy-food Nexus: a proposal to analyze and (re)integrate the policy in the Federal Government
National Policy on Agroecology and Organic Production. WEF Nexus. Governance. Methodology.
The National Policy on Agroecology and Organic Production (PNAPO) was established by Decree No.
7,794 in 2012, with the aim of integrating, articulating and adapting policies, programs and actions that
induce the agroecological transition and organic and agroecological-based production (BRAZIL, 2012).
Despite the existence of works that addressed the analysis of the conception, results, impacts and, more
recently, the dismantling of this public policy, after 10 years of its publication, there are still gaps about (i)
what impacts the recent institutional changes (2016-2020) provoked in the governance structure of the
policy within the scope of the Federal Government; and, ii) means of leveraging the PNAPO as a
coordinated institutional arrangement. Considering the convergence between PNAPO's objectives and the
integrating potential inherent in the Nexus WEF (water-energy-food) conceptual approach, this rationale
was operationalized in guidelines and analytical tools. To explore the identified knowledge gaps, a review of
the scientific literature on the WEF Nexus approach was conducted. It was proposed to categorize the main
WEF Nexus approaches into a set of analysis perspectives and combining them with social networking
tools, they were used as a guide to analyze the impacts of recent institutional changes (2016-2020) on the
governance structure of the PNAPO in the Federal Government. The research results show that the
interministerial network responsible for the governance of PNAPO's socio-environmental security agenda is
weakened, formally disjointed and that 80% of initiatives related to the socio-environmental security agenda
are contradictorily sectoralized in MAPA and in related entities (Anater, Embrapa and Incra). In order to
identify ways to leverage the execution of PNAPO in the Government as a coordinated arrangement, three
tools inspired by WEF Nexus were developed and applied with managers and former managers of PNAPO
in the public sector: the Matrix of synergies and trade offs, the MSTO; the summary measures of
precedence, dependence and codependency; and the intersectoral cooperation networks. From the
triangulation of the inputs of the analysis section with the feedbacks of the tools, the research concludes that
the MMA, INCRA, Anater and Embrapa, central sectors of the governance network of the socio-
environmental security agenda of PNAPO, do not have, in the political and current federal government
(2019-2022), institutional capacity to coordinate the maintenance of the policy in the central government.
Finally, it is recommended, through structural adjustments, that the informal governance in practice by
MAPA's Organic Production Coordination should be the main inspiration for managing the maintenance of
the policy in government. In the governance model proposed to manage the PNAPO in the Federal
Government, it is identified the need to create a technical panel chaired by the MMA and with attributions
and functions of control and support for decision-making. An inter-ministerial institutional arrangement is
discussed that serves both to minimize losses in the current political context and to promote a more effective
resumption in an eventual policy shift that brings movements more aligned with the agenda of sustainable
family farming. Complementarily, the thesis research proposes a roadmap for applying the WEF Nexus
approach for analysis and integration of governance of intersectoral policies.