Governing a Regional Development Initiative: The Experience of Vale do Itajaí, Southern Brazil

Itajaí Valley is a region in the state of Santa Catarina in Southern Brazil. It includes 14 municipalities, the largest being Blumenau. The economic backbone of the region is textile and garment manufacturing, though there is a variety of other industries (metal engineering, electrical products, food processing, software), and agriculture is another important source of income.

Regional co-operation started in the mid-1990s with the creation of the Comité da Bacia, a committee with representatives from all municipalities which was to address the problem of floods which occurred on a regular basis and caused major damage. The purpose of the committee was to identify the causes of the floods and remedies against them. It was soon discovered that the problems lay with the lack of management of smaller rivers feeding into the Itajaí river, in particular the lack of maintenance of small dams, but also deforestation and other practices which in phases of heavy rainfalls led to a swift rise in the level of Itajaí river. One of the important learning processes in the course of this work involved stakeholders from Blumenau, the dominating city and the place most affected by floods, who suddenly realised that they needed the co-operation of the small municipalities. This led to a less arrogant and pushy disposition of Blumenau stakeholders.

The Itajaí Regional Development Forum was created in 1997/98, stimulated by some extent by state government. It is being coordinated by a professor at the Regional University in Blumenau. She has a background in regional planning, and she is doing this job mostly on a volunteer basis since her teaching load has not been reduced.

The Forum has been organised in a bottom-up way. It started with the creation of some eight working groups. Each working group consists of a number of representatives of organisations who have a stake in a given issue, plus a number of volunteers.

The Forum itself meets on a monthly basis. Once per quarter all the people involved in working group activities are invited to attend the meeting. The other two quarterly meetings are attended by delegates from each working group. The Forum is mostly about information exchange: Delegates report about the projects being developed by their working group.

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