Contradictions, risks and vulnerability in the provision of basic sanitation services in squatter settlements

The question of waters in the slum Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Abstract

This article aims to investigate water as a natural resource in squatter settlements in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, focusing on two aspects: water as an essential resource for human activities and water as an element of risk and vulnerability due to the torrential rains that cause floods and landslides, damaging houses and residential quarters and posing risks to health and life. Thus, we will emphasize water as a fundamental natural resource and water as a hazard to the natural and built environment. Our example is the slum of Rocinha in the city of Rio de Janeiro, which suffers from the precarious water supply and also from the floods that cause socio-environmental disasters in its territory. Rocinha experienced several damages from the floods of January 2019, which caused landslides and triggered a parliamentary investigation (CPI) about these inundations, to identify flaws in public works and policies concerning the protection of risky areas. One of the major problems in Rocinha is basic sanitation, which was one of the main objectives of the Growth Acceleration Program - Urbanization of Precarious Settlements (PAC-UAP), a federal program that allocated resources for the urbanization of slums in Brazil from 2007 to 2016.