Os consórcios públicos intermunicipais no Norte de Minas Gerais: desafios do Consórcio de Desenvolvimento Ambiental Sustentável do Norte de Minas

Abstract

This research deals with the Intermunicipal Public Consortia - PC established in the Northern region of Minas Gerais, in particular the Consórcio de Desenvolvimento Ambiental Sustentável do Norte de Minas - CODANORTE. The objective is to analyze the creation and operationalization of the IPC, in the North of Minas Gerais, with a case study of CODANORTE. The specific objectives are to understand the experiences of the IPC in Brazil and to study the cooperative arragenments in Europe; to map the IPC in action in the North of Minas Gerais, as well as the participation of these consortia in overcoming the challenges of the provision of public services to their populations and to discuss the political relations in these forms of inter-municipal cooperation of the mesoregion; and analyze the creation proccess of CODANORTE, as well as the consortium actions in relation to the program "North without Dumps". The methodology established to achieve the purpose of this work had seven stages: study of publications and governmental documents, with the subject of Inter-municipal Public Consortia and Urban Solid Waste - USW; interviews with the leaders of the CODANORTE; field research in municipalities in the region; data processing and graphical representation of data; participation in meetings and assemblies, interviews with environmental technicians and, finally, analysis of the municipalities regarding the effectiveness of the disposal of solid waste. It’s shown that IPC can represent gains in scale to small municipalities, mainly in the north of Minas Gerais, meeting economic, social and environmental development for population at these places. It is a possibility of governance to the municipalities offer quality of public services. However, it is worth noting that this policy also presents challenges caused by economic and political interests and conflicts, in opposition of the consortia, as well as for lack of interest and technical understanding of the benefits coming from them.