Abstract:
This paper seeks to understand the link between the recognition of access to drinking
water as a fundamental right and its enforcement by the Brazilian State. Based on the
importance of water for human existence, it analyzes how the lack of appropriate
actions aimed at access to drinking water in Brazil hinders the effectiveness of the
recognition of this fundamental right. In order to support the need to make access to
drinking water effective as a fundamental right, it addresses the importance of water
as an existential minimum for the guarantee of human dignity. It shows how the Food
and Nutrition Security Law can, as an existential minimum, promote the human right to
water. It also exposes how the new Latin American constitutionalism is paramount in
the recognition of water as a fundamental right, starting from the ecocentric vision of
the right to nature. In this conception, it promotes a reflection on the impossibility of
treating water as a commodity, since it is an integral part of human nature. The
objective of this monograph is to present the way in which the State's role in
guaranteeing access to water as a fundamental right contributes to the eradication of
hunger and poverty, promoting greater social equality. The methodology adopted was
a bibliographic research of periodicals, books and legislation related to the theme of
access to water.