When means undermine ends: an extreme case of financialised water privatisation in Brazil

The privatisation of water and sanitation services has accelerated significantly in Brazil, driven by a shift towards financialisation, since the regulatory change enforced by the 2020 reform. While the impacts of financialised management are widely debated, a critical gap remains in empirical research that connects the mechanisms of financial engineering with non-compliance with the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation. Through the lens of financialised privatisation, this study investigates how this financial logic exacerbates the dissociation between the global capital extraction and the social objectives of service provision, focusing on the concession of the Metropolitan Region of Maceió. Through an analysis of BRK Ambiental, a subsidiary of the private equity firm Brookfield, the research demonstrates the social-spatial inequities within a framework of profit maximisation, natural monopoly, and power asymmetry. The findings reveal that the operator is highly leveraged, prioritising the payment of debt interest over staff wages and essential infrastructure investments, despite the persistence of critical gaps in access. This has resulted in actual tariff increases and a continued reliance on public funds, despite the presence of private management. This dynamic is particularly damaging in areas with impoverished populations, resulting in an increase in complaints and protests from users regarding water shortages and excessive charges. The article concludes that financialised privatisation reconfigures the sector to extract value for global capital, tending to decouple the means from the social ends of service provision.