Between water and discrimination

environmental racism in the reality of Brazilian sanitation

Abstract

The sanitation deficit in Brazil constitutes a structural barrier to citizenship, disproportionately affecting non-white populations through environmental racism. This concept describes how social and environmental injustices fall more heavily on vulnerable ethnic groups, particularly in the Brazilian Amazon. The research demonstrates that Brazil's development model has historically treated the Amazon as a resource deposit for exploitation, implementing large projects that displace indigenous, quilombola, and rural communities to urban peripheries lacking basic infrastructure. Census data (IBGE 2022) reveals striking disparities: in the Legal Amazon, non-white populations are four times more likely to lack access to water networks and nearly four times more likely to lack sewage systems compared to white populations. This environmental racism is reinforced by current sanitation policies that prioritize economic returns over human rights, particularly excluding rural populations. The 2020 sanitation law's focus on urban areas and private capital attraction further marginalizes historically underserved communities. The study argues for reparative strategies including: disaggregated data collection by race, regulatory policies incorporating differentiated treatment, and public policies anchored in human diagnoses considering racial and spatial factors. Without addressing institutional racism, vulnerable populations will continue suffering preventable diseases and injustice.