Universidade pública e o desenvolvimento de tecnologias sociais de gestão da água: o caso dos projetos de pesquisa e extensão da UFLA

Abstract

The “Tecnologia Social (TS) ”, a recurrently term used in Brazil, has the objective of solving social and environmental problems, providing socio-productive dynamics and sustainable development. The Universities have the required mechanisms to produce social technology, which is inserted in the local context where the social demands are gathered and, thereby, results are generated, promoting social transformation. UFLA experienced - specifiely in the year of 2013 -, a water crisis that devastated the Brazil southeastern. Therefore, the present study was responsible for analyzing how UFLA has developed research and extension projects in the field of water management technology. The research followed a descriptivequalitative character that sought to describe, historically, how the relationship of the university with the tripod of inseparability is; to list all research and extension projects that are developed by the institution; to identify how many of these projects contemplate the water theme, with regard to its use, its management and its maintenance as a resource; as well as analyzing how many of these projects are developed from a social technology perspective. It was concluded, then, that UFLA does not produce many works that correspond effectively to a social technology of water management, since, at the end of this study, only 14 research and extension projects met the assumptions analyzed.