The Achilles’ Heel of Hydrological Commons Governance: Lessons from Mariana on Institutional Capture and Power Asymmetries

The 2015 Fundão dam collapse in Mariana (Brazil) exposed a systemic Achilles’ heel in the governance of hydrological commons. This article argues that economic power asymmetries embedded in a mining-dependent regional political economy appear to bias regulatory mechanisms, reorienting them from instrumental problem-solving toward ceremonial validation of the status quo. Drawing on Original Institutional Economics and theory-testing process tracing, the study examines how corporate actors and specific state licensing agencies co-constructed a regulatory environment conducive to escalating risk. The analysis documents that (i) licensing conditionalities displaced precaution, (ii) basin-committee agendas excluded dam safety, and (iii) the Renova Foundation institutionalized cost-shifting, and it treats the Foundation not merely as a buffer, but as a mechanism for converting open-ended social liabilities into bounded and administratively programmable expenses. To counteract these pathologies, the article proposes Institutional Scaffolding—design heuristics centered on epistemic independence and democratic auditability—while critically assessing failure modes.