Inland waterway transport in Amazonia: assessment on governance and sustainability
Inland navigation, Agenda 2030, Institutional Analysis and Development, Tocantins River, Q
Method.
This thesis aims to analyze how interactions between the State, users and other interested actors in the face of current
governance rules and strategies explain the lack of sustainability of Inland Waterway Transport in the Brazilian Amazon. For
this, the following strategies were used: building a taxonomy of environmental and socioeconomic issues present in the
scientific literature; investigating the effects of interactions between governance mechanisms and public budget execution in
managing waterway transport infrastructure projects in Brazil; applying the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD)
framework to understand how institutional configurations could facilitate sustainability in the Brazilian Amazon waterway
system and systematizing perceptions of the different actors interested in IWT, in order to discover what are the obstacles and
the facilitators for waterway development in the Amazon, using the Tocantins River as a case study. Sustainable IWT the one in
which freight increase meets lower environmental and economic costs in waterway developing works and operations, while
being resilient to climate change and promoting social equity. The comparison between budgets and waterway investments
rejected the notion that budgetary insufficiency is a major obstacle. Instead, over seven years, DNIT failed to invest 111% of an
average annual budget. The application of the IAD structure showed the necessity to consolidate interactions between state
and non-state actors so that decision-making is efficient. The use of the Q-method allowed to find four different social
perspectives on THI sustainability issues. The main point of divergence is the socio-environmental aspects related to the Pedral
do Lourenço. Environmental advantages over other modes of transport are not strong arguments to increase waterway use in
Brazil. Furthermore, communication and integration between different actors is a challenge. A new governance arrangement
would be necessary to incorporate diverse views, mainly from social movements and affected populations, in the decision-
making process. This thesis proposes to recreate discussion arenas to increase participation in the decision-making process to
maximize and democratize social, environmental and economic benefits from Amazon waterways.