In the Brazilian city of Recife, the distribution of drinking water follows lines of class, gender and race. Pernambuco, of which the city is the capital, is the Brazilian state with the lowest per capita water availability, and this is due as much to inefficiencies in the distribution network as to structural problems of water resource availability and quality. 

The wealthiest neighbourhoods, predominantly inhabited by white people, enjoy a near-continuous water supply, while the poorest communities — predominantly Black and located in peripheral areas — experience frequent and prolonged outages and must also contend with floods and other climate emergencies. A process of water services privatisation is now under way, aimed at addressing the infrastructural problems. But it could further widen inequalities.

The water problem in Recife

According to data from the state agency for water and climate (Apac), the average water availability in the state of Pernambuco is around 1.27 million litres per inhabitant per year, equivalent to 3.6 per cent of the Brazilian national average. These are very low figures, making it the territory most affected by the water crisis in Brazil — a country that has itself been experiencing a steady reduction in its water surface area and consequently in the supply of water to its citizens for years.

In Pernambuco the problem is that the exploitation of water basins, in a territory that is almost entirely semi-arid, has reached its limit and there are no other sources to draw from. This is compounded by infrastructural problems, with a fragmented and obsolete network, meaning that losses of treated water during the distribution phase can reach 50 per cent.

Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, home to over 1.5 million people, bears the consequences of this water fragility. But in profoundly different ways depending on which neighbourhood one lives in.

Water inequalities

Brazil's water and sanitation authority (ANA) stipulates that water in the country should be available for more than 18 hours a day, that is, over 540 hours a month.

To understand the situation in Recife, the media outlet Mongabay cross-referenced the water supply schedules of Compesa, the public company responsible for managing Pernambuco's water system, with national census data from IBGE, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. The result is that there are very poor neighbourhoods, such as the peripheral district of Ibura de Baixo, where water is available for only 91 hours a month. The population here is very poor, predominantly female and Black, while the average monthly income is just over 200 dollars. In other neighbourhoods, such as Boa Viagem, the supply exceeds 700 hours a month. This is a predominantly white area with incomes ranging between 1,309 and 2,992 dollars. The same disparities in water supply also emerge when comparing neighbouring districts with very different socioeconomic profiles. This is the case with Apipucos and Alto Santa Terezinha, where homes just a few metres apart but separated by urban boundaries show differences of hundreds of hours a month in water provision.

There are cases of homes in peripheral neighbourhoods where water outages have lasted as long as fifteen consecutive days. And even when water does flow from the taps, it often contains a quantity of chlorine that renders it effectively unusable for domestic purposes. The result is that families in serious financial hardship have no option but to buy bottled water, diverting further resources from their already meagre finances. Or to find rudimentary ways of illegally tapping into old water distribution networks, so as to supplement their supply. In wealthier neighbourhoods, on the other hand, families who already enjoy a water supply equal to or above the national average invest resources in drilling wells or relying on tanker trucks. This widens the "water gap" with poorer neighbourhoods and also increases pressure on the already fragile water resources of the city and the state of Pernambuco.

The role of the climate emergency

The condition of extreme water fragility in the poorest neighbourhoods of Recife is compounded by a paradox. These areas are often located in zones of high hydrogeological risk, such as hillsides, which means that the scarce water supply is counterbalanced by devastating floods, as happened in 2022. This is yet another component of an urban infrastructure that, both in housing and in water provision, follows precise lines of class, gender and race. And it illustrates how the climate emergency strikes most disruptively at the most vulnerable people.

A law passed in July 2020 during the government of Jair Bolsonaro introduced a series of reforms to the national water services system, with the aim that by 2033 99 per cent of the Brazilian population would have access to drinking water and 90 per cent to wastewater collection and treatment. To achieve this, greater recourse to concessions and private investment was envisaged — which is precisely what is happening today in Recife. In 2023, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had recently won Brazil's elections once again, introduced a series of decrees aimed at giving greater room for manoeuvre to state-owned public companies involved in managing sanitation services for citizens. And with the Novo Pac, a federal investment programme, he mobilised resources for the water sector. This did not, however, prevent the state of Pernambuco from taking the path of privatisation.

In April 2026, the governor of the state of Pernambuco, Raquel Lyra, signed a partial concession contract for water services with BASA Saneamento, a private operator. The plan envisages the mobilisation of 3.3 billion dollars across 151 municipalities with the aim of improving the distribution network, but according to some industry insiders the way in which this sum will be spent is not clarified in the contract, and there is a risk of investment in certain areas and not others, with the consequence of a widening of inequalities. As Anderson Quadros, president of the Association of Senior Employees of Compesa (Procompesa) — the workers' association of the state water company Compesa — explains to Mongabay, "with the new concession, investments will probably remain concentrated in flat, profitable areas, leaving peripheral neighbourhoods — often classified as high flood-risk zones — excluded from services." This is also because the agreement outsources water distribution and wastewater collection, considered the most profitable segments of the system, while water production and extraction remain in the hands of the state company. This could push private operators to ignore the water emergency in working-class neighbourhoods.