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L. L. Benites-Lazaro et al.
up a lot was “biofuels,” a theme that is closely related to food. In Brazil, sugarcane
is the basis for ethanol production. It is also one of the most important agricultural
crops in the southeastern part of the country. More recently, the revision of zoning
sugarcane plantation in fragile ecological biomes such as Pantanal and the Amazon
was revised, thus directly linking the theme of ethanol to the problems of agricultural
expansion and deforestation in the country.
With respect to NGOs, “climate change” was found to be the central theme. NGOs
have a discourse that is more aligned with international debates, where concerns
about water, food, and energy are debated in light of the risks of climate change. The
“Climate change” theme was followed by “food”, thus confirming the importance of
food for the three groups.
Surprisingly, despite the crucial importance of water for the other two sectors, the
theme “water” does not appear as a protagonist in any of the three groups, and only
appears as a main theme in the MEDIA thematic network. The most worrying is that
for government, i.e., the actor among the three groups with a great deal of decisionmaking power, water is the least popular theme, after climate change and health.
This demonstrates the frailty of water governance in Brazil compared to the food
and energy production sectors. Moreover, it demonstrates the lack of government
measures to adapt to a future projected to be impacted by climate change.
In 2014, for example, a rare anomaly in the high atmospheric pressure system
resulted in an abrupt decrease in precipitation in southeastern Brazil and generated a
crisis in the water supply system and compromising the irrigation system across the
state of São Paulo, which is the leader in sugarcane production in the country [35].
This event generated a domino effect, bringing to the fore problems in water management in southeastern Brazil. Even so, our analyses show that the theme “water” is
not yet close to the leading role in the Brazilian government discussions. An early
study of Benites-Lazaro et al. [5] found that in Brazil the water and land abundance narratives, along with narratives surrounding the country’s tropical climate,
have been appropriated to grow and expand the bioenergy and agribusiness sectors.
Additionally, the dominant perception among Brazilians that water is an abundant
resource, as is often supported by members of the political and economic elite, has
created both a lack of awareness and inaction when it comes to water conservation
and management, and has contributed to poor water governance.
The results of this study reveal network analysis to be a useful tool to explore
the connection between themes and keywords. However, despite this technique
being useful to depict relationships, connections, and links and provide quantitative measures of thematic and keyword relationships, it does not reveal anything
about the context in which the words are used in a given text. As previous studies
[4, 43] have shown, there is a need to incorporate other methods, such as discourse
analysis, to qualitatively analyze the discourses of the actors analyzed.
L. L. Benites-Lazaro et al.
up a lot was “biofuels,” a theme that is closely related to food. In Brazil, sugarcane
is the basis for ethanol production. It is also one of the most important agricultural
crops in the southeastern part of the country. More recently, the revision of zoning
sugarcane plantation in fragile ecological biomes such as Pantanal and the Amazon
was revised, thus directly linking the theme of ethanol to the problems of agricultural
expansion and deforestation in the country.
With respect to NGOs, “climate change” was found to be the central theme. NGOs
have a discourse that is more aligned with international debates, where concerns
about water, food, and energy are debated in light of the risks of climate change. The
“Climate change” theme was followed by “food”, thus confirming the importance of
food for the three groups.
Surprisingly, despite the crucial importance of water for the other two sectors, the
theme “water” does not appear as a protagonist in any of the three groups, and only
appears as a main theme in the MEDIA thematic network. The most worrying is that
for government, i.e., the actor among the three groups with a great deal of decisionmaking power, water is the least popular theme, after climate change and health.
This demonstrates the frailty of water governance in Brazil compared to the food
and energy production sectors. Moreover, it demonstrates the lack of government
measures to adapt to a future projected to be impacted by climate change.
In 2014, for example, a rare anomaly in the high atmospheric pressure system
resulted in an abrupt decrease in precipitation in southeastern Brazil and generated a
crisis in the water supply system and compromising the irrigation system across the
state of São Paulo, which is the leader in sugarcane production in the country [35].
This event generated a domino effect, bringing to the fore problems in water management in southeastern Brazil. Even so, our analyses show that the theme “water” is
not yet close to the leading role in the Brazilian government discussions. An early
study of Benites-Lazaro et al. [5] found that in Brazil the water and land abundance narratives, along with narratives surrounding the country’s tropical climate,
have been appropriated to grow and expand the bioenergy and agribusiness sectors.
Additionally, the dominant perception among Brazilians that water is an abundant
resource, as is often supported by members of the political and economic elite, has
created both a lack of awareness and inaction when it comes to water conservation
and management, and has contributed to poor water governance.
The results of this study reveal network analysis to be a useful tool to explore
the connection between themes and keywords. However, despite this technique
being useful to depict relationships, connections, and links and provide quantitative measures of thematic and keyword relationships, it does not reveal anything
about the context in which the words are used in a given text. As previous studies
[4, 43] have shown, there is a need to incorporate other methods, such as discourse
analysis, to qualitatively analyze the discourses of the actors analyzed.