Through a case study taking part in a state-run participatory process for water-body classification in the Rio Doce, Brazil, I draw on concepts of plural ontologies to evaluate and critique the limits of modern Brazilian water management. The participatory process, while discursively inclusive, was ontologically exclusive in determining severe limits on the relationships to rivers that participants can legitimately bring. The ontologies of river-as-home, the river-as-Watú, the living ancestor of the Krenak Indigenous people, were not recognised in participatory events or the resulting management instrument. Based on empirical analysis of specific modes of ontological exclusion, I engage speculative design to imagine a pluri-ontological database for Brazil that can extend and build on the advances in participatory water governance that the 1997 Water Law have achieved (further articles are in submission as of April 2024). 

Thomas Rickard