Abstract
This paper studies how flaws in water governance design and social learning impact regional development. The empirical focus was a case study of the water governance model in Ceará, Brazil, a region suffering from water scarcity. In Ceará, this power asymmetry created a regional imbalance that favored the Metropolitan Region of Fortaleza to the detriment of other semi-arid regions of the state, which remained hostage to a subsistence model vulnerable to water scarcity. A qualitative approach was adopted to support the assumption that, in semi-arid regions, social learning has followed a trajectory in which water resource management adopts operational techniques and consolidates a bureaucratic apparatus that fails to promote regional development. The results indicate the consolidation of a vicious cycle that favors the development of the metropolitan region at the expense of the state's interior. By understanding how social learning can sustain water governance and perpetuate this vicious cycle, we examine the need for a model that enables a more equitable distribution of water resources, thereby advancing the socioeconomic development of vulnerable regions in the Global South.